The Soul Sepulchre
by Sholay
Summary: Deep in the subterranean tunnels under Amity Park's Museum of Natural History, an ancient evil stirs. Overwhelmed by parents, school, Vlad and budding powers, Danny is left with no defense against the creeping darkness rooting into his own mind. Even as he stands as Amity's last defense, he begins to doubt his own heart... 'Nomen mihi Legio est…quia multi sumus...'
1. The Field Trip

**Hiya!** Sholay here with my first Danny Phantom Fanfiction.

This story is rated PG-13 for possible violence and blood and general all-around creepiness, but there will be minimal to no adult content.

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom is the property of Butch Hartman. The plot bunny is mine, and though I encourage feeding the animals I ask that you please do not touch. Thank you.

NOTE: With regards to chronological orientation, this story takes place after The Ultimate Enemy, after Danielle and after Danny's ice powers. However, it takes place BEFORE Phantom Planet. No references will be made to this episode, as I myself haven't been lucky enough to see it yet.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher.**_

_-By Sholay_

_Something foul is stirring in Amity. It begins with a strange ghost attack on the museum; soon Danny's problems are multiplying faster than he can handle: aberrant powers, murder, school and Vlad. Now Clockwork arrives, bearing a mysterious glowing stone…_

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_**Chapter 1— **__The Field Trip_

They were on their annual field trip; Mr. Lancer's English class had been brought to the museum of Natural History just outside Amity Park and given free (or as free as 40 dollar admission fees can get) reign of the place.

Danny, who had always put more stock in the future and the stars, was having more than a little difficulty in appreciating the dusty and somewhat drab history of Amity and could be found trudging sluggishly between the displays.

" 'Walk through the entire museum, Fenton, study it, Fenton, gonna have a test on it Fenton,' " Danny was grumbling caustically under his breath. " 'Need to pass this one, Fenton, make sure you stay awake, Fenton.' Like it's _my_ fault I'm so tired all the time! Like it's _my _fault Skulker decided to play 'Hide and Go Blast Your Face Off' at 3 in the morning! And that Technus decided to refuel his new pet—using the city's power supply!—the night before that…and…" Danny trailed off as he realized his voice was getting louder and people were starting to send him strange looks. Too tired to properly care, the raven haired boy just glowered at the general population, slouching his shoulders and thrusting his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

After several minutes of walking aimlessly, Danny decided that he should at least try to complete the assignment. Looking around himself, he spotted a high, sloping archway leading into a shadowed room. The heavy density of people in the hall was severely thinned around the room, piquing the teen's curiosity.

Shouldering by a couple of large-bellied tourists, Danny made his way to the doorway and looked inside. Beyond the heavy oaken doors, the room was oddly dark. It was impossible to make out what was inside. Figuring it couldn't hurt to take a look, he stepped through the doorway.

As he hit the shadows of the threshold, something cold whistled past his ear and Danny's head shot up. He peered into the gloom as his eyes slowly adjusted. The room was emptier than he'd realized: aside from a middle aged Asian couple near the other end of the room, he was alone.

Sparing a glance at the exhibit's description on the wall, Danny was able to surmise that the room was a sort of tribute to the lost cities and cultures near Amity. Cultures that had been wiped out by plagues, colonization or other unexplained events.

But it wasn't the historical importance of the room that had the hairs on the back of his neck tingling.

Danny brushed a hand through his hair, feeling vaguely nauseous and ill at ease. There was something _dark_ about this room. Barely one step into this strange exhibit, the sensation of deep, inherent_ wrongness _had slammed into him so suddenly that he'd bit his tongue.

Looking around himself, Danny saw that the only source of light came from a set of huge windows set into one wall, reaching from floor to ceiling. With the cheery, cloudless day outside, the room should have been brightly lit; but instead, thick curtains of dark velvet were drawn over the windows, stifled the sun. Slowly, the curtains shifted in lazy waves, moving as though shifted by an invisible hand.

Turning his head, Danny's eyes paused on a tapestry hung against a different wall. The intricate twists of coloured string ran the length of the room and depicted some sort of violent hunt. Danny gazed at the thing, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the rather graphic pictures of a group of people slaughtering a boar and drinking its blood in a ritual to some disfigured deity.

Tearing his eyes away from the disturbing tapestry, Danny walked further into the room. Tall stone pillars were spaced throughout the room, reaching so high up that he had to crane his neck to see the intricate dome-shaped ceiling, which was decorated by intricate religious depictions of angels and demons. The floor was marble and Danny's hesitant footfalls echoed and reverberated around the room.

Many artifacts were placed on heavy granite platforms interspaced in the room. Danny shivered as he passed a lone tribal mask on a stand. The hollowed eyes seemed to stare right back out at him. Thick, black liner around the eyeholes and horns protruding from the forehead likened the mask to the devil.

Looking away, Danny saw an intricate mirror set in a painted wooden frame surrounded by the long tail plumes of some colourful bird. Within it he could clearly see his own apprehensive reflection, but… Danny looked closer… what was that foggy thing behind him?

Swiveling around, Danny's eyes scoured the area, his heart leaping into his throat.

Nothing.

Forcing himself to relax, Danny sighed and turned back around. He wished Sam and Tucker were with him. Sadly, they had disappeared, saying only briefly that they were each going to check out different areas of the museum—something about it taking less time, so the three of them could compare notes later. And so, Danny had lost Sam to Zoology and Tucker to Technology, leaving him to pick his lonesome way through Anthropology.

All at once, the feeling in the room got drastically worse and Danny shivered, hugging his arms and looking around. Did the room just get darker?

The cold feeling of dread, that of the prey being stalked by the hunter, befell Danny. His eyes skittered around the room, paranoia making his thoughts unfocused.

Backing away blindly, he accidentally hit something and jumped around, just in time to see the tribal mask fall from its stand and smash loudly upon the ground.

The curtains rustled wildly and the shadows danced. A wave of energy hit Danny so suddenly he cried out and curled into himself instinctively. He was not wanted here. He was intruding. This was the home of something… something dark, something malevolent. A spirit? A ghost? Many ghosts?

Danny had never felt like this before, it was like he was surrounded by hundreds… no thousands, of souls. Not even the Ghost Zone felt this bad, those souls were restless…these souls were _tortured_.

These souls were _angry_.

Danny's gaze was suddenly, inexplicably drawn to the tapestry, but with a sharp intake of breath he tore his gaze away. The faces... they were _grinning_.

Suddenly his eyes fell on the Asian couple, and he paused. They were staring at him, openly. Not the kind of curious or condescending looks he'd gotten earlier, but just staring. Blankly. Their hands hung at their sides and their eyes were wide and unblinking.

'_Are they overshadowed?'_ Danny wondered. But before he could do anything more, he shivered and gasped. But instead of the normal plume of blue smoke that usually rose from his lips, there was nothing.

_'What on Earth?'_

Letting instinct take over, Danny swung around, fists raised.

"What…?" But he was too late. The lights flickered and a fierce wind nearly blew him off his feet. He closed his eyes, covering his face protectively as he stood his ground. With a resounding crash, both sets of doors to the room slammed shut. He was locked in.

Cackling—so loud Danny had to cover his ears—echoed shrilly around the room.

A terrified scream shot through the noise and Danny twisted around once more, his battle cry ready on his lips…

…But it died straight away when he saw what he was facing.

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_And…Cue theme song!_

_To Be Continued…_

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Chapter 1 people! I know it was short; the next one should be longer. Please Review!

**Adio**


	2. The Beast

**Hiya!**

**Disclaimer: **Danny Phantom, Danny Fenton, Samantha Manson (Ha, I can say her name without anything happening to me! '_THUNK!' _OW! What was that? '_Picks up large combat boot.'_ Now where did that come from?), Tucker Foley and all related characters do not belong to me, they belong to the lucky Butch Hartman.

Review notes are at the end.

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_**The Soul Sepulcher.**_

-By Sholay

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_**Chapter 2—**__The Beast_

It was a beast, unlike any he'd seen before. Huge and black and formed from countless writhing tendrils of darkness, the thing was so tall it had to bend its head to not hit the ceiling. A large tail—thick as Danny was tall and five times as long—swished back and forth lazily, leaving trails of black smoke in its wake. Its body was taut, the dark masses making up the haunches trembling with the eagerness to pounce.

It was facing away from Danny—leering down at two people, a man and a woman, whose terrified forms barely stood any higher than the creature's paw—but Danny could still see some of its face, and what he saw frightened him. Its maw was gaping and huge, filled with teeth larger than Danny's head and filed down to jagged, broken points. Its ears were tucked back with fury and a low dangerous growl rumbled from somewhere deep in its throat, reverberating straight through Danny's bones.

But the worst part was the thing's eyes. A pale, sickly yellow, the two orbs gleamed with unholy light from within the darkness. Danny had a feeling they would look a thousand times worse trained on him.

The beast made the Fright Night look like a child's toy. As he gazed upon the behemoth, for a moment fear consumed Danny utterly and he was frozen.

Danny's hesitation nearly cost the man and woman their lives, but when the beast moved one massive paw closer to the couple—its nails scraping painfully on the marble floor, its forepaw easily tossing aside a tall granite statue like confetti—Danny was thrown into action.

"Stop!" he yelled, running forward. "STOP!" When the beast didn't respond, and moved again as though to step forward, Danny stepped forwards and put even more authority into his voice.

**"STOP!"**

Time stopped. Nothing moved and Danny stopped breathing, he was pretty sure even his heart had stopped for a moment.

Then, slowly, the darkness within the beast shifted and began to swirl in the opposite direction. It turned, nails dragging, until finally it was facing Danny.

Trying unsuccessfully to swallow his dread, the fourteen year old boy looked up. And as he did, his eyes were caught in the jaundiced irises of the beast. Danny choked.

He had been right. It was worse, so much worse, to be staring into the eyes of the beast.

He was drowning. In the beast's eyes he could see death: his mother's, father's, sister's, all slaughtered brutally by a ghost he failed to destroy. He could see Valerie, lying broken, dying by his own vengeance. And he could see Tucker and Sam, their eyes still open, but clouded and no longer shining, staring unseeingly. He stood above them… laughing.

'_No, I would never…_'

**'**_**But you could…**_**'**

And Danny saw himself, locked in a strange room. The hatred, self-hatred, was all consuming. There were no more options left, there was no more chance for redemption. Everything was gone. Lost. Something sharp was in his hands, poised, ready… his breathing got harder, and his body seemed to be getting farther away…

'_**No!**_' and with an amazing exertion of will power, Danny tore his gaze away from the beast's. He stumbled, but then his eyes flew up glaring scintillating green. With a flash he had turned ghost.

Immediately all hold the beast had over him fell away.

'_That __**thing**__ was trying to kill me!_' Danny thoughts were filled with incredulous rage. Sure, most of the ghosts he fought on a daily basis were trying to destroy what life he had left in his unnatural, half-ghost existence. Hell, even his parents had come close one or two times. But what this creature had done… It felt violating and intrusive, like it had shamelessly invaded him and left behind something slimy. '_No way I'm gonna let it get away with that_' and he floated upward until he was eye level with the beast, which greatly resembled a wild dog or wolf, now that he looked closer.

Those eyes, those disgusting yellow eyes—eerie yes, but not nearly as unsettling as before—regarded him closely. And Danny, with the distant ambivalence he used to regard all serious battles, identified the look as muted surprise. The teen clenched his gloved hands into fists, seconds away from lighting them with ghostly fire.

The couple, he noticed briefly, was being oddly unresponsive. Other than the initial scream—which Danny assumed had come from the woman—they hadn't moved or said anything at all. '_Must be in shock_' he reasoned. He just hoped they hadn't seen him go ghost.

'_**Young Ghost, who are you to dare command the Hounds of Legion?**_'

The deep voice echoed and reechoed painfully in Danny's head, jarring his teeth and making his ears ring even though the dog's mouth hadn't moved. '_It, that Hound, must be able to speak telepathically.'_ The word Legion sounded vaguely familiar to Danny, but he didn't have the time to place it. He ignored the fearsome maw and violating eyes and let himself fall completely into his familiar battle numb state of mind.

He leaned back, a familiar, cocky grin growing on his face.

"The name's Phantom. Danny Phantom." He intoned cheekily; he'd always wanted to say that.

A low rumbling and harsh wind blew through the room, nearly throwing Danny out of the air. Humor fled as Danny tired desperately to right himself mid-air. Cruel, high-pitched cackling came from somewhere near his ear. The wind intensified sharply. Danny had no time to regain control of his flight. He was swept up and tossed bodily into a wall. An invisible force pinned him there, ankles held together tightly and arms outstretched to both sides of him to the point of near pain. A mock crucification.

"_It is he,_" a voice whispered in his ear and Danny looked around furiously to identify his attacker. It was not the same voice he'd heard echoing in his head, but the Hound's mouth still hadn't moved. And the Asian couple he'd temporarily saved were standing motionlessly in the corner.

Deciding it was time to start fighting back, Danny's eyebrows drew downward as he powered up a ecto-blast in his hand. With a cry, he let the phosphorescent green energy fly toward the Hound. The beast didn't even twitch as Danny's blast neared him. Then, to Danny's shock, the ecto-blast seemed to hit a barrier, fizzling out of existence before it could even touch the Hound.

"_He is the One._" The vile voice continued and Danny suppressed a shudder as hot breath blew onto his cheek. With his wrists and ankles pinned to the wall, the only part of his body that he could move was his head and he craned his neck as far away from that voice as he could. He hated feeling helpless.

Drawing on pure determination, Danny bared his teeth and yelled back.

"Hey windbag!" he called. "Try fighting me face to face, or are you just a lotta hot air, getting your overgrown mutt to fight for you?" The banter sounded lame even to his ears, but it was the best the halfa could come up with on such short notice. Nonetheless, both the voice in the wind and the Hound seemed to completely ignore his words.

"_He is the one who would mimic our kind,_" the high voice whistled in the air, unaffected by Danny's taunts. "_He is but a pantomimic thief, a poor copy of our glorious kind. He is the Halfa._"

A loud growl and a few bone jarring thumps found Danny face to maw with the Hound as it walked slowly forward, then leaned in. It sniffed him. Disgusted, Danny tried another ecto-beam, with the same result as before. He wriggled then, going intangible, but the strange invisible bonds held and Danny remained a wall ornament.

The beast lowered its head pinning Danny once more with those strange eyes—gleaming and yet somehow dusky all at the same time. Danny grit his teeth as a peculiar sensation overcame him. He'd never felt anything like this before. It felt like something inside of him, something that lay beneath his skin, that made him _him,_ was pulling away and shifting. The closest he could come to describing the feeling would have been the odd half-alive, half-dead moment he went through right at the middle of his transformation.

Suddenly, that inner part, his being, gave a sharp tug outward. Danny bit his tongue cutting off a yelp.

'_What…?_'

It happened again, this time longer, and _harder_. Something was being ripped right out from inside him, through his skin, his eyes, his mouth and hair and it _hurt._

A whimper was torn from Danny's lips, unwilling.

Suddenly it stopped, and Danny, exhausted, slumped within his invisible binds.

'_**The thief has a strong soul.**_' The Hound mused in its deep, telepathic voice. '_**I shall devour him. Legion will enjoy feasting on such a soul. His strength will become the strength of Legion.**_'

Danny's eyes shot open in panic and he struggled wildly even as the beast's mouth opened, teeth shining within the infinite darkness of the mouth with promises of a painful death.

'_No, no, get away…_' Danny couldn't even gather the presence of mind to shout these words as he struggled to free himself: ecto-beams, ice, shields; intangibility and invisibility. But nothing worked, his attacks faded out of existence seconds after leaving his fingertips and the bonds held through intangibility. Finally Danny opened his own mouth and put everything he had into his ghostly wail.

Nothing happened. Danny felt a hand of ice close around his heart as his voice completely failed him.

Then the head loomed nearer and Danny saw within the Hound's mouth thousands of tortured souls, screaming and calling to him, beckoning him down into the depths of hell. Sword-like teeth descended like the reaper's scythe slowly, closer and closer toward his head. A long line of drool, viscous and slimy dripped down from one of the fangs, directly onto Danny's right arm.

He screamed.

The saliva _**burned**_. It felt like his arm was being sawed off, hacked at with careless abandon and dipped in acid.

Danny would have described it as thrusting his arm into hellfire.

"_Don't try to struggle._" The wind whispered sweetly in his ear as Danny tried to clench his teeth around the pain, muffling his yells. "_You should be honoured. The Legion has deemed you a worthy addition to their strength._"

With sudden, terrifying, clarity, Danny knew where he'd heard that word before. Legion. Legion! That was the name of the devil's own army of demons.

And he was about to be added to that number.

'_No,_' his mind refused.

"…No…" he whispered, voice raw. "Stop…"

Another drop fell, dangerously close to his cheek, and Danny flinched. Just the proximity of the saliva made his skin blister and burn.

"_What did you say?_" The wind crooned, sickeningly affectionate.

In a sudden, unexpected flurry, Danny's conviction returned to him.

"I said no." And his head shot up. "**STOP!**"

White light blinded him and Danny squeezed his eyes shut. Screams echoed in his head, then nothing. Danny tried to move, tried to open his eyes, but he couldn't feel anything, couldn't see anything.

He panicked.

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_To Be Continued…_

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Now for you reviewers!

**mutantlover09: **Hiya! Thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you liked the summary; I have a lot of interesting thing planned for this story, so we'll have to se how it goes. Oh and I hope you liked the chapter!

**Moonstar5569: **Hey, I tend to spend a lot of time writing details (which can work both for and against me... especially when readers get impatient with my pace XD). But I'm glad you liked it, and I hope you liked this chapter too! Thanks for the review!

**Kyelor: **HI! Yay, you're still reading this! Ahh, so yeah, I know it's not quite as good as Sooryavansham (_rubs back of head sheepishly_). Would you believe that after all the involved thinking and plot detailing I did for Sooryavansham, I just wanted to write something short and spontaneous? It's true that Danny's a little out of character, granted, he's had a pretty bad week XD, and he's a pretty emotional guy, so he tends to do stuff he doesn't mean to when he's angry... But I guess I'm so used to writing Kai that it's transferring over! I'll try to be better with that... Oh! And I fixed the mistakes XP, I can't believe I did that! So... was the Hound detailed ok? (I added a description of the room too, if you want to check :D)

**Adio**


	3. The Mistake

**Hiya!**

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom is Butch Hartman's, the Hound is mine as is the voice in the wind… and the dumbstruck couple (goodness, like _those _guys are anything worth being proud over).

Reviewer notes are at the end.

Enjoy.

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

-By Sholay

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_**Chapter 3—**__The Mistake_

Light. Blinding light, surrounded him on all sides… Danny couldn't speak, couldn't hear… couldn't _move_…

'_What happened, am I dead?'_ He struggled fruitlessly for a few moments, then fell limp, the beginning of tears stinging his eyes. '_No…'_

_**'****Awaken.'**_

Loud beeping interrupted his melancholy and with the feeling of moving quickly through a tunnel, Danny was slammed back into his body. His hands, his eyes, his nose and mouth: he felt each with growing elation, near hysteria. '_I can see, I can feel!'_ A couple of tears really did fall this time and he wiped at them with a laugh. Realizing he was on his knees, Danny pushed himself to his feet then took a few stuttering steps, rejoicing in his ability to move. Never had he thought he'd be happy to be crying, but the experience had been more than a little harrowing and Danny didn't think he would take his simple existence for granted ever again.

The loud beeping brought him back to reality and Danny quickly looked around. He was still in the museum, so it was… the alarm system making all that noise? The beast had surely made enough of a racket to attract some attention. The room was pretty much in ruins just from the thing walking around.

Speaking of which… Danny looked around, eyes wide with apprehension. The room was empty of any large, shadow-tentacle monsters. The Hound was gone.

Danny shuddered with relief as the tension in his bond unwound.

He had no idea what had just happened and right now he could not have cared less. Danny checked himself over. He was still in ghost form, but only barely, exhaustion weighted heavily on the halfa. Whatever that bright light had been, it had taken a lot out of him.

'…_And what **was** that light?'_ But Danny put this thought away. He didn't have the time to think about that now.

Flexing his right hand, Danny was relieved when it seemed to be working alright. The saliva had hardened on his upper arm though, so with his left hand Danny reached up and tried to scrape it off.

Burning pain shot up both his arm and hand. Immediately he jerked his hand away with a yelp. Biting his lip, Danny looked at his left palm; he saw that the silvery-white hazmat glove from his suit had nearly completely melted away, showing patches of bare skin underneath. It wasn't the suit he was worried about—that had the odd ability to regenerate itself every time he turned from human to ghost—no, it was his hand, which was an unusually red, irritated colour. As far as he knew, only ghost weapons could affect him like that.

Looking at his right arm, Danny also noticed that the hardened whitish substance coating his upper arm and part of his shoulder was unaffected, still clinging stubbornly to his throbbing skin.

Loud pounding on the doors brought Danny back to his senses and he abandoned his arm. It hurt, but he'd have to leave it for now. After all, he'd had worse.

Voices called out from the other side of the oak doors but Danny ignored them. Right now he had to go human before the guards could break down the door and blame 'Danny Phantom' for this mess.

'_At least they're not calling me Inviso-Bill anymore'_ He thought dryly, happier than anyone when that ridiculous name had finally had the last nail driven into its coffin. Tiredly, Danny moved to let the rings of his power wash over him.

Mere seconds away from turning human, Danny remembered with a start, the man and woman standing in the corner. Danny froze and his head swiveled to the side, they hadn't so much as twitched, or said a single word for awhile and Danny had completely forgotten about them. He'd nearly blown his secret wide open in front of them! That is... if he hadn't already done that when he'd turned ghost. The couple was staring straight at him and Danny decided he didn't want to turn in front of them, just in case.

He tried to fly, but fell almost immediately. Then he tried to go intangible, but succeeded only in turning his left foot invisible. His powers were fried. The only thing he could do now was to fall back into human form. And… maybe he could make them forget by overshadowing… No, not enough energy. The pounding got louder; he had no choice, he would have to reveal his secret. He would have to do it now.

Reluctantly, he gave in and immediately the twin rings snapped into being, one traveling up his body, the other down, turning him from a white haired, green eyed-ghost into a black haired, blue-eyed boy.

But as the rings passed over his arms and shoulders he bit back a cry of pain as the wound on his right arm flared. Gasping, he nearly clapped a hand to the limb, but remembered at the last second what had happened last time and refrained. Clenching his hands tightly into fists instead, he locked his jaw and lowered his head, breathing shallowly through his teeth until he was master of the pain.

A burst of low whispers caught his attention. Danny looked up to see the couple murmuring excitedly between each other; it was the most animated he had seen them. Another loud pounding rocked the door and Danny knew it wouldn't be long now before the police busted in. He would have to deal with this quickly. Glancing over to the couple, Danny took a deep breath then let it out in a puff of air.

He strode over to the couple, who quietened and stared as he neared. Feeling a little self-conscious, Danny raked the fingers of his left hand through his hair, a small, lopsided grin on his face.

Danny opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say a word, the woman said something very quickly. Danny blinked.

"Excuse me?" Danny asked and the woman repeated what she'd said… Or so Danny assumed, he didn't understand it any better the second time. "Sorry," he gave an apologetic smile and moved to put a hand behind his neck, but stopped when his right arm protested. "I don't understand what you're saying."

The man then said something to the woman and they both turned to stare at Danny.

"Uh…ok," Danny was a little thrown by all the attention, but he kept going. "Look… ok…uhh, oh man, how am I going to do this?" He worried to himself; he had to tell these people that he wasn't evil and that they couldn't tell anyone his secret. He decided to give it a go.

"I," and he pointed to himself. "Danny Phantom" and they stared. "Danny Phantom" he repeated and—for lack of energy to actually go ghost—made a '_fwoosh'_ing sound that was supposed to be him turning ghost and flying away. Then he mimed throwing a few punches and pretended to be fighting. He felt like and idiot, but quite suddenly, the couple made a noise of understanding.

"Ah ha, Ahriman." The woman nodded seriously then looked at the man. "Ahriman."

Danny paused, he thought that maybe they understood and Ahriman was what they called a ghost in some Asian language: Japanese or Chinese or something. "Yes" he agreed "Ahriman" and he pointed to himself.

This seemed to have a negative effect as the woman gasped in fear and the man wrapped his arms around her protectively.

"No, no!" Danny threw his hands up in an appeasing gesture but they flinched back. "I'm not evil, I'm good." He paused, wondering how on Earth he could act out good. He settled for plastering a cheesy grin on his face and attempting to clean up some of the debris. "See?" he said weakly, even as his lopsided, disfigured granite statue crumbled. "Good." But the couple, so intent on their cowering, didn't seem to understand or be listening and Danny sighed. Where were Sam and Tucker when you needed them?

A particularly loud slam against the doors shook the walls and Danny glanced over. The doors were splintering. The security guards must have brought a battering ram over. A few more hits like that would likely bring them down. Struck with inspiration, Danny brightened.

"Look, I'm gonna go get help." He said, trying to speak slowly, though he doubted they understood. "Help, my friends Sam and Tucker. You just stay here ok?" He gestured toward himself and the door, then to them and the ground. Hopefully they would get the message and stay here while he tried to find Sam and Tucker in the crowd coming through the door. He was sure they could help. At the very least, Tucker would probably be able to translate what the couple was saying on his PDA.

He moved away to go stand near the door, but stopped when something touched his arm.

"_You… come back?_" The woman asked in a strange, watery, almost nonexistent voice. Danny moved away from her, unnerved and clutching the place where she'd touched him.

"Yeah." He said absently. "Yeah, I will." He turned away and immediately looked at his arm. It didn't look any different, but where her fingers had brushed his arm came the feeling of something cold and oozing caressing his arm, sticking there and spreading, making it feel like worms crawled beneath his skin.

Danny made a vow. When all this was over he was never setting foot in another museum again.

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_To Be Continued…_

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And that would be chapter 3!

**Moonstar5569: **Hello again! So glad you liked the last chapter. There was a little less action in this one, but the mystery is deepening. What do you think of the strange couple? Oh and I'm happy that you liked the Hound, he was fun to write (Yes… I enjoy torturing poor Danny a little too much XP). Your review made my day, thanks for all the compliments and I hope you liked this chapter too!

**sciencefreak330:** Hey! Thanks for reviewing. Glad you like it so far and I hope you enjoyed this chapter as well!

**Quick-demon:** Hiya! So… yeah, Danny got out of this one, but never fear; I have plenty planned for him yet! XD Anyway, I'm really glad you like it so far. As for the Hound… hmmm, was it a demon? Or was it something else entirely? I'm not gonna say! (_Evil chuckle_)

**Thunderstorm101:** Heh heh, IS numbness better than blinding agony? I dunno, both seemed pretty bad to Danny XP. Anyway, I'm glad you think it's creepy, this is my first mystery/strange fic (I'm more of a angst and drama driven person :D) so it's something new for me. Hopefully I'll manage to keep it up as I progress through this fic :) At any rate, I hope you liked this chapter!

**Kyelor:** Ah! XD You make too many good points! This is the first time that I've actively 'tried' to make something creepy (note, 'tried' being the operative word XP) so yeah, hopefully I'll get better as I go along in the story. Also, I guess a lot more errors are popping up here 'cause I haven't really reread it as many times as I reread 'Sooryavansham'… Heh heh. Anyway, thanks for the review, it was really helpful: I changed a few minor details (like 'taut' and replaced 'fluttering' for 'shifting'… with those curtains, I actually wanted to convey that they were moving without any cause, not that they moved with the slightest breeze, so maybe 'shifting' will convey that better, I really can't tell anymore :D). At any rate, yeah, that couple is definitely not normal! I'm glad you liked the chapter (even if there were so many mistakes!), and I hope this one was ok too.

**Adio**


	4. It Comes

Hiya!

**Disclaimer:** Butch Hartman owns Danny and all related characters. I own everything you don't recognize here.

Reviewer notes are at the end.

Enjoy.

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

-By Sholay

I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

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_**Chapter 4—**__It Comes_

Cleanup after the incident at the museum had been a nightmare. The police had swarmed the area, inspecting everyone and everything before officially declared the area and all surrounding perimeter a HECK—Hostile Ectoplasmic Criminal Key-point.

Danny had heaved a mental groan when he'd heard this.

'_Honestly, you'd think they'd hit rock bottom when they came up with the 'Guys in White'. But no, they got out a shovel and kept digging…'_

At any rate, HECK was a new code the department had engineered on the fly for just this specific occasion. Nonetheless, while the code might have been lacking, the police procedures certainly weren't: following the declaration, the entire museum had been subsequently disemboweled of all tourists, staff and wayward children. Some people were still looking around in bewilderment, wondering what had interrupted their quiet Wednesday morning; Danny had noticed one small boy complaining to his mother that he had not been able to finish in the bathroom… He'd stopped looking around after that.

Everyone had gathered on the grassy lawn in front of the museum, waiting patiently while the police inspected the area and called in the professionals—AKA Danny's parents.

Danny rubbed a hand over his face, remembering with lingering mortification how his parents had toppled out of the Fenton Assault Vehicle and bounded across the grass—right over the 'Keep off the Grass' sign, much to the museum staff's chagrin—before proceeding to nearly smother him in questions, concerns and kisses. They had paid absolutely no heed to the harsh laughter of his classmates nor the amused looks from the police, naturally.

Danny could practically see his social status being trampled, much like the once pristine grass under his father's heavy feet.

Then again, it wasn't like he'd had much of a social status to begin with; so Danny supposed the point was pretty moot anyway.

He supposed that at the very least he should be grateful he wasn't a suspect. The police had taken one look at the destroyed granite statues, deep, claw-like, gouges torn into the marble floor, the tattered tapestry and had completely written him off as an innocent victim. His parents, of course, only needed to hear the word 'Ghost' and they were off scouring every inch of the room for ectoplasmic residue.

Danny was suddenly very glad that he hadn't bled anywhere across the room.

The police had questioned him—briefly, since Danny had basically said it had been so dark he didn't see much of anything. "I saw a pair of scary yellow eyes." Danny remembered saying, playing on the 'poor, innocent, little kid' act that his small stature easily allowed him. "And then I covered my head and hid in a corner… The ghost kinda threw stuff around the room, until the alarm went off, and then it ran—ah, flew—away." It was a shaky story, but acceptable, and the police had dismissed him. Danny had immediately gone to find Sam and Tucker and they'd boarded the bus to return to school.

Danny looked over at his two best friends sitting on his left: Tucker had his nose in the PDA as usual, while Sam, squished between both boys, had her legs crossed and a large, black book balanced carefully in one hand.

As though sensing Danny's gaze, Sam looked up. She raised an amused eyebrow at him and Danny gave a small, crooked grin in return.

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about what happened in there?" She asked.

Danny opened his mouth, hesitated. "Yeah," he smiled, "It wasn't a bit deal, just another ghost. There've been a lot of them recently." He shrugged, but froze as a sharp pain lanced through his right shoulder and down his arm. Danny tried to hide his grimace, but Sam didn't buy it for a second.

"You're hurt." She stated, frowning, shutting the book with a muffled thump.

'_That wasn't even a question.'_ Danny thought wryly. Outwardly he gave a short laugh. "Yeah, happens when you get thrown into a wall."

"Dude, what is that? The fourth time this week?" Tucker broke in and Danny shared a quick grin with him.

"Tuck-er," Sam glared at the boy in exasperation. "It's not funny! Danny could have gotten seriously hurt!"

"Shh! Not so loud!" Danny hissed. Gesturing with one hand for them to keep it down, Danny looked around to see if any of their classmates had heard. But being the 'socially invisible' outcasts of their school had its benefits: no one was even paying the slightest attention to their conversation. "It's really not that important Sam," Danny added. "Look, it doesn't hurt that much. I'll be fine by tomorrow." As though to prove it, Danny rolled his shoulder forward, but this backfired as he had to bite back a gasp and squeeze his eyes shut as the pain tripled in intensity.

"See!" Now Sam was hissing back at him, obviously annoyed at his lack of self-regard, but also alarmed at how much pain he was showing. It took a lot to even make him flinch. "You _are_ hurt! And it isn't just 'nothing'."

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?" Danny snapped back, feeling unusually short-tempered. "You want me to just stand up to Skulker… or whatever ghost shows up to try and take over Amity next, and say 'Oh, can you just try and aim somewhere over my shoulder today? My friend doesn't like it when I get hurt.' Yeah, Sam, real smart, I'm sure that Vlad will be only too happy to sit down over tea and crumpets and discuss civilly how he wants to kill Dad, marry my Mom and enslave me."

Sam drew back, and for just a second she looked hurt. Danny immediately felt a rush of guilt wash over him; he hadn't meant to say that. But then Sam's expression turned stony. "Look, Danny…"

"No, Sam, wait," Danny sighed, he let his head hang, bangs flopping forward over his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Suddenly he had a headache forming there. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. I just… I'm just…"

"I know Danny," Sam's expression softened then as she regarded him. "You're just tired, with all those tests we've been having and the ghost attacks, you've barely had enough time to sleep all week… But Danny, I'm just worried." She raised her hand, paused, then let it fall on Danny's unhurt shoulder. He looked up. "And being tired doesn't give you the right to snap at me like that."

"I know, I know." Danny looked down then up; he gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry?"

Sam slowly smiled in return and Danny watched her. A few seconds passed and then—

"Aww, get a room you two lovebirds!"

"WE ARE NOT LOVEBIRDS!"

And everything was back to normal between them.

Half an hour passed. Mr. Lancer had boarded the bus and declared the class fit to leave the museum. Sam and Tucker continued talking, but Danny found himself gradually easing himself out of the conversation. His friends were arguing about something, as usual (From what Danny could tell it had something to do with the humanity of the annual seal hunt in… where was it again? Newfoundland? Where on Earth _was_ that anyway?). And Danny found he just didn't have the stamina to act as mediator between them, _again_.

Usually it didn't bother him too much. Honestly, it happened so often he should be used to it. But not today, not right now. Danny blamed it on his tiredness, but as he let his gaze drift out the window, idly watching the scenery pass by, he knew it was something else.

'_Why didn't I tell them about the Hound?'_ Danny didn't know. Why hadn't he said anything? He always told them everything… It just seemed like, as he was about to tell them, something had send off warning bells throughout him. Why? He had no idea. But Danny always trusted his gut instinct, so he had passed off the entire thing as some random ghost attack. Not a lie… not a _complete_ lie…

But then there was something else.

After security had broken the door down, Sam and Tucker had come racing through first. Completely ignoring the warning calls from the police they had each grabbed one of his arms and ushered him out of the room, quietly asking why he hadn't just phased through the walls. Still feeling dazed by what had just happened, Danny had stayed silent, only moving once to remove his hurt arm from Sam's painful grip.

But then, just as they were leaving the museum, Danny had remembered his promise. Spinning around and breaking Tucker's hold on him, Danny had tried to go back—fighting against them with surprising vigor to reach the doors of the museum.

When they had asked him what he was doing, he'd answered truthfully: he'd promised the couple in the room with him that he'd go back. They had stared at Danny, who, disquieted, had turned to look at them. "What?" He'd asked. And Sam's answer had stilled him.

"_There was no one else in that room besides you, Danny."_

'_No one.'_ Danny brought himself back to the present and watched his reflection in the window. '_But I didn't sense a ghost… So what were they? Something else?'_

The day's events had bothered him more than he would have liked to say: The mysterious couple, the Hound, the voice in the wind and that white light… Danny had been so sure that the Hound was about to devour him whole. But then that light had come, encompassing him and maybe even driving the Hound away…

'_Saving my life?'_ Was Danny's inevitable, troubled line of thought.

So preoccupied was he in his thoughts, that Danny barely even registered it when his eyes slide shut of their own accord, his stiff frame slowly relaxing as he sunk against the window.

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_Danny's eyes slowly opened. He blinked sluggishly, once, twice, thrice, trying to clear the fog in his head. His eyelids felt like lead; couldn't he just have a few more minutes of sleep?_

_Just then, Danny caught sight of something moving next to his head and he started backwards._

_The road… it was just the road through the window… Danny sighed with relief, trying to ease his rapid heartbeat. Then he froze._

_The road?_

_Fully awake now, he gazed around, wide-eyed, at his surroundings. It was dark outside; nighttime, but he recognized his surroundings: he was still on the bus. But wait… How could he still be on the bus at night? And where were Sam and Tucker?_

_Danny looked back and forward, scanning empty seat after empty seat for any sign of somebody, anybody. A sudden tingling in his spine made Danny shiver as his eyes fell on the darker corners of the bus. The shadows seemed to move, stretching languidly before receding, then moving forward again, just a little further…_

_Something flashed in Danny's peripheral vision and he jumped; swinging around, he swept his hand through thin air. For a moment, he stood there, trembling, on edge. Just a hint of movement, just a hint, and he would turn ghost…_

_But nothing moved._

_Unwinding himself from the tense knot he'd drawn himself into, Danny forced himself to laugh. He was being ridiculous: jumping at shadows!_

_The bus jolted and Danny steadied himself, clutching at the back of a seat. Looking outside the window, he noticed the scenery outside the window was suddenly much less welcoming. The ground, once covered in grass, was barren and cracked. Trees, black and knotted, wormed their way into the air: bare, anemic branches clawing the dark, stormy sky._

_Swallowing, Danny slowly walked toward the window. Standing right before it, he gazed at his own, pale, transparent reflection. There was nothing specifically odd about it._

_The bus jolted again, roughly, and Danny was nearly thrown into the seat. Catching himself, he looked up, once again catching sight of his reflection in the window._

_But something was wrong._

_His reflection was still gazing downward._

_Danny swallowed again, feeling a lump of unease settle above his heart. Raising an unsteady hand, he reached toward the window._

_And then the figure's head moved._

_Danny froze, watching in helpless fascination as the head rose, long black hair parted and fell in that familiar hairstyle, and pale skin was revealed._

_But as Danny watched, black eyes opened and fixed on him with unadulterated hunger. A twisted sneer parted a cracked, lipless mouth, baring small, sharp, rotted teeth._

_A gasp of fear escaped Danny and he recoiled. But that was all he did, it was like his feet were stuck to the ground. He couldn't move…and his ghost form seemed out of his reach…_

'_**Daniel.'**_

_The thing crooned his name, curling its black tongue over sharp teeth, drawing the word out._

'_**Dan-iel.'**_

_This time it cocked his head, its tone a mocking sing-song._

'_What are you?' Danny felt his mouth form the words, but no sound came out. Yet the figure bent its head the other way and the sneer widened into a crazed grin. For a second they remained immobile, staring at each other._

'_**DANIEL!'**_

_Danny leapt back with a yelp as the figure suddenly threw itself at the glass. Hands scraping at the widow, it clawed at the window in a frenzy of inaudible sounds and cries, causing Danny's hair to stand on end._

_Danny realized all at once that he could move and he took a few shaky steps back, then raised an arm. Fully intending to blast the window into nonexistence, he called upon the supernatural fire of his ghostly half._

_But nothing happened._

_Almost as though sensing his dilemma, the creature stopped moving and regarded Danny for a moment. Then it grinned, and from deep within, it emitted a low chilling laugh that nearly made Danny physically sick._

'_**Daniel.'**_

_With mounting horror, Danny watched as the thing reached forward **through** the glass. Glass rippled like water around the hand; short, fat fingers with long, ragged claws reached toward him._

_Danny stumbled backwards, raising an arm to protect himself._

_But suddenly it surged forward; Danny couldn't move fast enough to avoid its hand. It latched onto his wrist and pulled._

_Danny gasped as he was yanked unwillingly forward toward the thing. He twisted his wrist but its grip was like a vise. Thick and strong, the cold, fleshy hand wound around his wrist like a leech, its nails digging painfully into his skin._

_Then the shoulders and head emerged._

_Danny looked up, wide-eyed, into the thing's empty gaze. Its grin widened and Danny felt himself being drawn closer._

_Nearly nose to nose, Danny could feel himself getting lost in that coal-black abyss of nothing— its eyes slowly devouring him._

'_**Come, come little Casper.'**_ _It purred near his ear and Danny felt a rush of putrid air pass his nose and cheek. Dead fish and rotten eggs, Danny tried to pull away. It tugged him back. '__**Don't you want to play a little game with me?'**_

_Suddenly Danny felt a stinging pain in his wrist, like a shock. He looked over and his eyes widened when he saw the creature's hand—encased in sparking electricity—tightening slowly around his wrist. The pain sparked again, stronger, and this time there was an answering throb from his shoulder. Danny clenched his teeth and squinted his eyes, his arm jerked spasmodically with the force of the shocks. But then, with sudden realization, Danny's eyes shot up the stare at the creature._

'_You, you come from Legion.' He accused. Once again, his own voice was silent to his ears, but the creature effused its chilling laugh._

'_**Play with me.'**_ _Was all it said and it pulled Danny ever closer, then rested its forehead on his._

'_No… get away!' Danny threw his head back, screwing his eyes shut, struggling wildly._

_A heavy, throbbing pressure was building in Danny's head. The creature laughed and swung him around like a rag doll, slamming him roughly into the window. Danny cried out as he felt his back hit the glass hard then start to sink through. The thing was trying to trap him! He twisted and resisted, the pressure all the while rising steadily between his eyes and this time he thought he heard a voice._

'_Stop!' The thing smiled a crooked grin, showing off cancerous gums in a mockery of Danny's own smile._

"Danny!"

'_Get away!' Its hold tightened._

"Danny!"

'_Let go of me!'_

"DANNY!"

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"DANNY!"

Someone was shaking him.

Danny whimpered, and shrank away from the hand on his shoulder. It withdrew almost immediately and, confused, Danny stopped moving and tried to open his eyes.

The first thing that he saw was bright light and he squeezed his eyes shut briefly as they protested against the sudden onslaught.

Then Danny realized what the light meant and his eyelids flew open immediately. He sat up straight and looked around, disoriented and panicky.

"Danny, Danny! It's fine, relax, you were having a bad dream! Are you ok?"

"Hunh?" Danny rolled his head to the side, confused, not understanding at first. Then it hit him. "A dream? It was just a dream?" Words could not describe the relief that flowed through Danny at this realization.

"Yeah, you looked pretty out of it man, so we decided to wake you up." Tucker said, his tone was offhand, but Danny saw some deeper concern in the way his friend glanced sideways at him.

"You were saying things…" His eyes shifted to Sam, who was also regarding him keenly.

"What things?" He asked hesitantly.

"I don't know, at first you were just mumbling, we thought you were just dreaming…" Sam looked away, then at Tucker.

"Then you got louder, you were saying 'Get away' and 'Stop'."

There was a pause here and Danny held his breath. '_Don't ask why, don't ask why'_ He mentally begged, he really didn't want to explain that right now.

"And then your hand started to glow." Here Sam sent a pointed look at Danny's right hand which was folded in his lap underneath his left.

"My hand?" Surprised, Danny leveled his hand to his eyes. '_It worked? Then why didn't anything happen in my dream?'_

"Danny! Your wrist!"

Sam's sudden exclamation caught Danny off-guard. "Huh?" He asked, flipping his hand over to look at his wrist.

His eyes widened.

A bruise in the form of a thick, blue-black ring encircled his wrist, surrounded by irritated red skin that was already beginning to blister as though heavily burned. Slowly, suddenly breathless, Danny turned his hand over. There, on the inside of his wrist, he could clearly make out the five half circles that the creature had gouged into his skin with its nails. The world blurred for a moment as Danny stared, transfixed.

"What happened?" Tucker leaned over Sam, trying to get a better look, while Sam reached out to touch the dark bruises. Danny immediately withdrew his hand, hiding it between himself and the window.

"It's nothing." He said hurriedly. Then, realizing how unbelievable that sounded, he took a breath and tried to force some confidence into his voice. "It must have happened during the fight in the museum."

"Danny," Sam sounded unconvinced. She shot him a look. "I didn't see anything like that before—"

"Yeah, well, it might've just shown up now." Danny looked away as he said this, signifying the end of that topic.

Again, Sam looked less than pleased with him; and again, Tucker came to the rescue. "Well, while you were asleep Lancer told us that we're gonna basically go back to school and present what we learned at the museum. It's to combine all our findings or something… since none of use actually got to finish the tour. Also there's gonna be a test on it later."

Danny groaned at this. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!"

"Nope." Tucker shook his head, then shot his friend a sympathetic smile. "And guess who everyone blames for the extra work?"

Danny gave another, quieter, groan. "Can't I ever get a break?" He asked, mostly to himself.

"Ha ha, Danny, you're the hero! Heroes don't need breaks!" Tucker laughed, and Sam shot the dark skinned boy an exasperated smile.

But Danny didn't smile. His mind went back to the incident at the museum, and then to the dream he'd just had. Just by remembering it, his entire right arm gave a tiny spasm of phantom pain. If this was what heroes had to deal with…

"Maybe I don't want to be… anymore…" He whispered, so quietly he barely even heard it, though Sam sent him an odd look.

For the rest of the bus ride, Danny was more or less silent as he gazed out the window. As they finally pulled into the school though, the bus gave a jarring jolt as it went over a large bump. Danny was thrown out of his idle daydreams and he looked up into the window.

Cold fear washed over him and he froze, staring.

"Hey, Danny! You coming or what?"

Danny shook his head, holding his left palm tightly against his temple as though to dispel the image he'd just seen.

"I'm coming, Tuck!" He called and stood to join his friends as they moved out of the now stationary school bus. But just before he had moved away completely, he paused, and, almost against his better judgment, forced himself to look back at the window.

The clear pane showed only the school grounds and cloudless, blue sky.

Danny sighed in barely suppressed relief. "You've been watching too many scary movies, Fenton." He told himself, and with a small shake of his head, he turned to walk away.

But he couldn't quite kill that nagging feeling in the back of his mind that something was terribly wrong.

Because in that moment, when his eyes had snapped up to look out the window he hadn't seen his own reflection.

Instead, coal-black eyes over a grinning mouth with cracked lips and rotted teeth had stared back at him.

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_To Be Continued…_

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My longest chapter yet for this story! Woot! Tell me what you think!

Now, to my wonderful reviewers:

**mutantlover09: **Hehe, yup Danny lives… only to be tortured further XD (yes, I enjoy torturing him just a LITTLE too much). Anyway… that Asian couple IS strange… Hmmm… what _do_ they want? _Do _they understand English? Are they going to tell anyone Danny's secret? Are they ever going to show up again (along with that Hound)? Am I ever going to answer any of these questions? XP, You'll just have to wait and see!... Oh and did you like the creature in the window?

**Thunderstorm101:** Truth be told I'm a bit of a wimp too (though I have a strange penchant for getting involved in full contact sports… (_rolls eyes_) tell me how THAT oxymoron works out). But anyway, the point is, I imagine Danny to be the kind of heroic guy who would rather BE in pain and have that knowledge than be left in a void of nothing… I guess I figure he would rather have something tangible, and straight forward, to fight, rather than not knowing what he's up against… Does that make any sense? Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter!

**Anonymous Shadow:** Hiya! Thanks for reviewing! Yeah… 'yucky saliva' just about sums it up XP. And there _are_ a lot of weird things going on, aren't there? The Beast, the couple, and now the creepy thing in the window…. What could it all _mean?_... Hmmmm… (_Evil grin_).

**ArmoredSoul:** Heh heh, Glad you think it's scary, what about this chapter? Was it ok:D Hellhounds are evil but THIS guy is the one with the bad breath XD! Thanks for the review!

**Adio!**


	5. Quirks of Life

**Hiya!**

**Disclaimer: **Butch Hartman owns Danny and all related characters. I own everything you don't recognize here. I also do not own the book _Things Fall Apart_.

Reviewer notes are at the end.

Enjoy.

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I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

-By Sholay

I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

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_**Chapter 5—**__Quirks of Life_

"_Things Fall Apart! _Mr. Fenton, what happened to your hand?"

Danny visibly shrank as the entire classroom's attention was suddenly drawn to his bruised wrist. Shoving his hand into his pocket, he tried to feign an unconcerned air.

"Oh it's not anything important, Mr. Lancer. A piece of granite must have clipped me while I was hiding from the ghost."

Mr. Lancer raised an eyebrow and Danny averted his eyes, mentally willing him to move on. '_It's not like he ever cared about what happened to me before, why does he have to start now, of all times?'_ the raven-haired teen had been more than a little surprised when his teacher had noticed the bruise, _and_ had expressed concern about it… That was definitely new. He briefly wondered if Mr. Lancer was being overshadowed.

Fortunately, Mr. Lancer nodded then and looked away. Danny gave a small sigh. "Are you sure you don't need to visit the nurse's office, Mr. Fenton?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." Danny said nodding. The last thing he wanted was the nurse finding out something _odd _about his blood, or his healing rate… or his DNA in general.

"Very well, then do you have anything to present for the class?"

"Uhhh…" Danny suddenly remembered why he was standing in front of the class; he had gotten sidetracked by Mr. Lancer's sudden exclamation. A few sniggers came from the class behind him and Danny felt something whack him on the side of his head.

Looking down he saw a paper ball roll by, scribbled on the inside of it he could barely make out the words "FenToad Stinks!"

…Yeah, he didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out who threw _that_.

Danny shifted slightly and watched, out of the corner of his eye, as Dash and Qwan high-fived each other proudly. The sniggering increased.

Mr. Lancer shot the class a disapproving frown as the noise level rose. "Quiet down people! We have important work to get done here!" Not a word was mentioned about the paper ball and the small bit of respect Mr. Lancer had build in Danny's mind when he'd asked about his wrist crumbled away.

'_Typical. Favor the jocks and cheerleaders, as usual. What ever happened to the educator's impartiality?'_

"Mr. Fenton!"

"Huh?" Danny looked up; he'd gotten lost in his thoughts again. He had to stop doing that.

"I asked if you have anything to present." Now Mr. Lancer was looking at him with his usual reproving frown and Danny let himself sink into his usual 'delinquent' act.

"I don't, sir." He turned his head to the side, not bothering to elaborate, what good would it do?

"Might I ask why, Mr. Fenton?" Mr. Lancer's question caught Danny off guard—once again, he hadn't expected the teacher to care—and for a second he scrambled for something to say. Nothing smart came to mind, so Danny resorted to the truth.

"I didn't have time, sir. I was supposed to be looking at Anthropology, but then I got locked in with that Ghost. There wasn't much left to study after it had finished there. Unless I wanted first hand experience of how the Aztec ruins be_came_ ruins." His voice twisted with irony at the end.

At least one snicker was drawn from the class by this comment. And Danny's mouth curved into a lopsided grin.

"I understand your point Mr. Fenton and I will therefore be allowing you a pass for this assignment. You may take your seat."

For a second, Mr. Lancer's words didn't register. In fact, the entire class went quiet with shock. '_Mr. Lancer was giving an excused for an assignment? That's impossible!'_ Danny was sure that he had been staring slack-jawed at his teacher for at least half a minute before Mr. Lancer gave him a small, tired smile.

"Contrary to what the student population may believe, I am actually willing to grant reprieves when the excuse is _reasonable_." Here he shot the class a sharp look. "Now, if you are sure that you do not wish to visit the nurse's office I urge you to please take you seat, Mr. Fenton. We still have a few presentations to get through."

Still in shock, Danny made his way back to his seat, where Tucker and Sam immediately sent him identical, incredulous, notes:

'_I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST GOT AWAY WITH THAT!'_

But later, when a glowering Dash finished a less-than-stellar presentation and subsequently sent a vicious look in Danny's direction that promising violent retribution, Danny wondered if it really had been worth it.

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"FENTON YOU FREAK! GET BACK HERE SO I CAN GIVE YOU THE WAILING YOU DESERVE!"

Sprinting around yet another corner, Danny leapt clean over someone tying their shoe. He stumbled but, pushing off the floor with one hand, quickly caught himself and ran on.

"No-o thanks." He muttered to himself. Chancing a glance backward, he saw the hulking form of Dash come barreling around the corner, tossing both jocks and geeks aside in his warpath. "I like my internal organs where they are, thank you very much."

"DANNY! WATCH OUT!"

"Huh?" Startled Danny spun his head back forward just in time to see the garbage pail directly in his path.

It was a split second decision: hit or go intangible?

"Aw, this is gonna hurt—!"

With a yelp, Danny threw his arms over his head and ploughed straight into the can. A loud crash echoed around the hall as the pail overturned with the sound of ringing metal. Danny was momentarily air-born as he toppled over the round can. A collective wince went through the watching crowd as Danny fell painfully into the heap of trash, landing hard in a tangle of limbs and half-eaten remnants of lunch.

"DANNY!"

He groaned, raised his left hand to his head and shook it to clear the cobwebs. Shifting, random pieces of paper and old crumbs of food fell off his shoulders and head in a shower. Reaching up, Danny gingerly removed a banana peel from his shirt. A shadow fell over him and he blinked, looking up to see who it was. He grinned.

"Hey Jazz, didja get the number of that ghost-bus?" His older sister looked down at him with a soft smile. Bending forward, long red hair cascading over her shoulders, she offered him a hand. At first Danny went to reach up with his right hand, but a dull pain reminded him of that day's events and instead he grabbed her wrist with his left hand, stumbling to his feet. When Jazz saw this, she shot him a concerned glance, but he sent her a warning look in return.

"FENTON!"

With a startled glance Danny's head snapped up to see Dash, puffing, but no less angry, advancing slowly toward him. Danny stepped forward. Lightly, he touched his right shoulder, noticing with some satisfaction that the pain was at least significantly less than earlier that day. It was bearable enough for him to take another hit there, if need be. Preternatural healing came in handy every now and again. As he moved, he subtly he maneuvered himself in front of Jazz. In response, she sent him a long look as his back was suddenly facing her.

"Fenton, I am going to cream you!" Dash cracked his knuckles menacingly as he advanced and Jazz watched with alarm as Danny just stood there, too proud to even back away. She saw his shoulders tense and she realized with a jolt that he was just going to _take the beating_.

Thinking quickly, she stepped lightly around Danny just before Dash could do anything. She ignored the narrow look Danny sent her: a clear, 'what are you doing?', and held out her palm to Dash.

"Hey, hands off the little brother, ok? Remember, I'm tutoring you next Friday!" The threat in her tone was so clear, not even Dash could have missed it. And indeed, after a moment of thought, Dash rocked backwards on his heels, a sneer on his face.

"Fine then." He said, then his eyes shifted past Jazz to Danny. "Your sister saved you this time Fen-turd. But she ain't gonna always be there to protect your freaky ass. So you better watch yours…" Suddenly his eyes shifted back to Jazz and she was disgusted to see his eyes move up and down her body. "…And I'll be watching hers."

She could practically feel Danny bristle behind her. "Why you—!"

"Danny, Danny!" She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Stop, you can't start a fight here!"

"You can't just let him get away with that!" Was Danny's shocked response as he stared up at her in disbelief.

"Not _now _Danny." It was her turn to send him a warning look. Luckily, Danny got the point and backed off. His scowl was dark, and she saw his eyes spark with something that most definitely not _human._

"_Danny._" She hissed and he grunted, looking away and blinking. However, though the ethereal, radioactive green faded from his eyes, they still seemed to be unusually brilliant, almost disconcerting. Jazz paused momentarily, regarding her little brother silently. She couldn't remember her brother ever having such an intense stare.

Deciding to let it be for now, she looked back, only to see Dash leaning sideways against the lockers: arms crossed and a smug grin plastered across his thick features.

"We'll be in touch Fenton." He said. "And I'll be seeing you, babe." He added to Jazz, throwing her a lewd wink before turning, jerking his jacket up around his shoulders and striding away.

Jazz turned back to her fuming brother.

"How dare he say that about you! I'm gonna—"

"You're going to what, Danny?" She sighed. "You can't start a fight; you know Dash's athletic status makes him practically untouchable. You'll get suspended, or worse. You can't afford to have your grades get any lower."

"I know!" Danny shook his head, throwing up a hand in frustration. Then he looked back up at her. "But I won't let him say stuff like that about you! Listen, if he ever, _ever_, tries _anything_, and I mean **anything**, Jazz, then you tell me and I'll make sure he won't be able to see straight for a _week_." He didn't even have to yell, the conviction in his voice rung clearer than any bell.

"Danny…" She couldn't stop a small smile from forming on her face; her little brother was so sweet, being all protective of her! "You don't even bother to protect yourself. I can take care of myself, you don't have to—"

"You're my sister, Jazz. That's what brothers do." He crossed his arms and looked away, his tone was final.

"Danny," She said again, reaching up to squeeze his shoulder. But whatever she was going to say fled her mind when he flinched, just slightly, under her touch. "Danny! Are you hurt? That's the second time you've favored your right arm."

" 'S nothing," he mumbled, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets and not meeting her eyes. Jazz spotted the lie immediately; her brother was a terrible liar. "Ghost attack at the museum 's all."

Jazz opened her mouth to say something more, when someone interrupted her.

"Hey Danny! There you are! Are you ok? I heard Dash was chasing you down the halls again."

Danny looked up. "Oh, hey Val, yeah, I'm fine. Jazz saved me. Otherwise I'd've probably been a goner." He gave his friend a small self-deprecating smile, jerking a thumb in Jazz's direction; and Jazz wondered, as she always did, how he could possibly be so humble all the time.

Valerie came closer. Her long, curly ponytail bounced as she moved and deep forest green eyes shined with concern. "Are you sure? Especially after what happened at the museum, with your hand hurt and all."

Jazz shot Danny a sharp look, but he just blushed and rubbed the back of his neck—with his left hand, Jazz noted. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine! Honestly, you guys are too nosey, it's nothing."

"Uh-_huh,_" Valerie raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Look, lunch is almost over and I gotta go do something. I'll talk to you guys later, 'kay?" Danny smiled then quickly bowed out of the conversation and walked away. Neither girl missed how suddenly he left.

"Huh," Valerie said thoughtfully. Jazz sent her a questioning look. "No, it's just that… If I didn't know him any better I'd say he was hiding something."

"Yeah, heh heh…" Jazz gave a nervous laugh.

"But c'mon, this is _Danny_ we're talking about." Valerie watched Danny's retreating form and gave a fond grin as she saw him nearly trip over his own feet. "He so guileless, he could be Clark Kent." She laughed. "What do you think, Jazz? Is your brother the next Superman in disguise?"

Jazz too, was watching Danny. But unlike Valerie, she had been watching Danny's hands as he tripped. For a split second, as he had steadied himself, she'd seen his hand pass over the handle of a locker. Now as he walked away, the locker door opened and a small boy stepped out shakily. He looked at the lock in confusion, but then a relieved smile broke out on his face as he reveled in his reclaimed freedom.

"Yeah…" She said absently. "Superman…"

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_To Be Continued…_

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Hmm… Not a lot of action, but lots of character interaction, some development. Hope you liked!

Wow! So many reviews! Thanks to all of you!

**sciencefreak330:** The image which Danny saw in the window was, well… I can't really say, but it definitely wasn't anything good… Danny's got some trouble ahead of him!

**Quick-demon:**Hi! Thanks for reviewing! I really enjoyed reading your speculations, but you probably know that I can't tell you if you're right or not! Sorry! XD But regardless, I hope you liked the chapter!

**onlyreviews:**Heya! Glad you like it so far! It just looks like the mysteries are piling up, doesn't it? Poor Danny (_evil grin_). Thanks for the review, hope you liked the chappie!

**Soulcat56:**Hee hee! Really? It was scary? Thanks! I tried hard on that, but I wasn't sure if I managed to do it properly XD. Did you like this chapter? It wasn't as scary, but I had fun writing it (Danny, Danny, always getting into trouble XP).

**Thunderstorm101:** The only thing I have to say is that I'm a sucker for happy endings. There! Not saying any more! (_zips lips_) XD.

**mutantlover09:**Ok! I will never answer or question another one of your questions with a question… Or will I? XD I'm really glad you liked the last chapter, I was worried that I didn't quite manage to make it scary enough, since it was so far from anything I'd written before… Anyway, all your questions will be answered… eventually :) It might take awhile, but I don't want to rush it too much. There will be lots of mystery and action to keep you interested though!

**ArmoredSoul:**He he dreamstalking indeed! And the story's only just begun, what else is Danny in for?

**Akia Starfrost: **Hiya! Thanks for the review, and for all the comments. I wanted to try something creepy and mysterious, since I've never done anything like that before (I fall more easily into Drama/Angst, unfortunately XD). One thing though is that Danny _assumes_ that Ahriman is something from Asian mythology, merely because the couple in the room were Asian. However, whether it actually IS Asian… is another matter altogether. But you said you knew about Asian religions? Could you maybe tell me a little about them (East Asian in particular)? I know Buddhism exists in China and there are four mythological Gods in Japanese culture … but anymore than that eludes me. I really do want to find out though, so anything you can tell me will be helpful! Thanks!

**Flashx11:** Glad you liked it! And here's the update, hope you enjoyed it too!

**Adio!**


	6. Stir it Up

**Hiya!** Merry Christmas to one and all! Thought I'd give you all a little present so hope you like it! It's not exactly Christmas-y, but it's got its own charm.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny, 'tis a crying shame, but there is it! Oh and the story about the monkeys is true! It happened a few months ago in India, scary, huh?

Reviewer notes are at the end as always.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

-By Sholay

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_**Chapter 6 — **__Stir it Up_

"_And in today's news, among the sudden rash of strange incidents occurring all around town, an explosion of fire broke out at the apartment building on McLain Street, the cause of which is yet undetermined. The fire was confined and extinguished relatively quickly. However, flames and smoke trapped a number of occupants inside the building. Luckily, local hero Danny Phantom arrived on the scene and aided in the successful rescue of over a dozen citizens. Thanks to our ghostly hero's efforts no one was harmed in the incident. Here to speak with us on the incident is co-anchor, Lance Thunder. Lance?"_

"_Huh?" A blond haired man looked up from where he had been checking his hair in a compact mirror. "What are we talking about again, Cathy?"_

"_Danny Phantom" Was the woman's withering response._

"_Oh yeah! I remember that guy, green eyes, great complexion? Has the whole, creepy, glow-in-the-dark thing going for him? You know, that kid has am-azing hair!"_

"_O-kay then." Cathy stared at her partner for a moment. Then, shaking herself she looked back at the camera, plastering a smile on her face. "That's it for our daily news, next up, international check-point: A horde of angry monkeys attack a mayor in India—"_

Sam flicked the TV off with a snap and all four teens collapsed back into their seats with laughter.

"Oh, good Lord… I can't believe he said that!" Sam choked out.

"I don't know whether to be flattered or disturbed: the news anchor thinks I have great complexion…" Danny deadpanned.

"Dude, I think he has a crush on you…" Tucker grinned at Danny, who mock-shuddered in response.

"But Danny…" Jazz, though also smiling, was the most sober out of the group; she sat up straight, turning to her brother. "Did you really do that? Pull all those people out of the building, I mean."

Danny shrugged. "Yeah… It wasn't a big deal. The fire doesn't affect me in ghost form and I basically went intangible to avoid the worst of the smoke and flames. You don't have to _worry_." He sent a saucy smirk over to his sister who just huffed in response. "Besides, I've had a lot of free time lately; there haven't been many ghost attacks, so I've been helping out around town where I can." Now wasn't _that_ a change? Not even a week ago he'd been moaning and complaining about much the opposite.

"Aww, that's so sweet, Danny." Jazz reached over and ruffled his already messy hair.

"Hey!" Danny cried in indignation, swatting her hand away. "Don't touch the 'do; Lance Thunder loves this hair!"

"Hah, yeah, take fashion advice from the guy who thinks eye-shadow is the next male icon." Sam said sarcastically.

Danny feigned a hurt look. "And what exactly is _that_ supposed to mean, missy?"

"Nothing Danny," Sam smirked. "That red oval on your tee-shirt is simply smashing."

"You'd better believe it! This is my favorite shirt!" He exclaimed.

"The sad thing is: you're actually not kidding…"

"Oie!"

"Hey…" Tucker's nose lifted into the air—not unlike a bloodhound's—and he sniffed. "I think your _filet mignon_ has just passed optimum energy absorption and is beginning to burn."

"My steak!" Jazz cried, jumping to her feet. "Oh no, oh no! I forgot completely! Now it'll be overcooked and it'll be charred and I'll have to scrape off all the blacked carbon off the top or we'll all get food poisoning, or cancer, or—!"

"Relax, Jazz…" Danny rose to his feet in a single, fluid motion. He gave his sister an easy grin and she stopped mid-way through her hysterical rant. "I'll take care of it."

"Oh, but Danny," Jazz immediately changed her tone. "You made dinner yesterday, and it's my turn."

"Jazz, you know very well that you can't handle messing up. You'll just make an even bigger mess." The rashness of his words were dulled by the smile on his face. "I can handle it…" He moved into the kitchen but appeared again in the doorframe just a second later. "Besides," he added, a mischievous glint in his eyes, "I don't think I could handle choking down another one of your 'chemistry experiments' gone wrong."

"Ohh… get outta here, Danny!" Jazz threw a pillow at him and he just laughed. But then the pillow smacked him straight in the face and his laughter broke off, he looked down at the pillow, a strange expression on his face.

"Danny?" Sam asked. "What…?"

"Oh, hah, didn't see it coming, good one Jazz…" He gave off a short burst of obviously forced laughter and ducked back into the kitchen.

Jazz, Sam and Tucker all exchanged glances.

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Danny paused, just past the threshold of the door, but out of sight from the three in the family room. Cocking his head, he listened.

There was a moment of science, then:

"Hey whadday lookin' at?!" Tucker's shout broke through the air.

"I just can't believe that you're barely pulling a B in Foreign Languages and yet you managed to say '_filet mignon' _with a perfect French accent." Danny smiled to himself; he could practically see Sam's eyebrow raise and her lips pull back in a smirk as she said this.

Satisfied that they weren't talking about him, Danny moved on to attend to the burnt dinner. Grabbing a dishrag, Danny flipped the oven off and opened the door. Large plumes of smoke billowed out and Danny waved at the smoke with the rag, stepping back. Luckily, he had anticipated this.

The problem with the Fenton Thermal Energy Converter (F-TEC for short… Honestly, why they couldn't have just called it an 'oven' and be done with it was beyond Danny) was that it had been built to suppress smoke and fire. So used to random explosions and gas leaks, his parents now created everything in the Fenton household to be either military regulation or—at the very least—bolted to the ground. (The instigating point had been a toaster with a severe gas leak that had caused a rather… _unfortunate_ accident a few years ago when a simple missile launcher had turned the entire house—Thankfully empty of its occupants at the time—into an overgrown rocket, sending the house sky high…The bad news was that the entire house had had to be rebuilt… but FentonWorks was now the official name of a rather oddly shaped asteroid that orbited the sun and was sighted once every 40 years.)

At any rate, it took something just short of open flame before anything could be smelled from outside the F-TEC, even with Tucker's impressive olfactory skills. So, upon pulling out the wire rack, Danny wasn't surprised to see that the once tender steak meat was now little more than charcoal.

Throwing it out, Danny went to plan B: stir fry. Bringing out the necessary ingredients, pausing only to wash his hands, Danny set a pot and pan on the stove (the _Fenton_ Stove, of course) and got to work. He pulled some leftover meat—from the dinner he'd made last night—from the fridge. Then he drew out one of the sharper knives in the cupboard and with efficient ease, sliced the flesh into thin shades. Turning up the heat under the pan, he added a few drops of oil then dropped the meat slices carefully into it. Next he filled the pot with some water and set the heat on high. Checking the bag of frozen vegetables, he saw that it wouldn't be enough, so he pulled out some fresh greens from the fridge.

It was quite hilarious, Danny twirled the knife and brought it slicing down on an onion, an entire family of geniuses and _he_—average Danny, who was pulling a solid C average in school—was the only one with anything remotely resembling cooking talent.

He spun the onion sideways and began chopping again. He actually liked it, to tell the truth. Creating something with his own hands, seeing the product of something he made—something that came from inside _him—_it gave him a sense of pride, of accomplishment. He pulled a couple of peppers, one green, one red, toward him and, with a definitive strike, split them open.

That was the problem with his parents and Jazz: they thought too much. They scrutinized the recipe to such an extent that just a slight deviation, a single error: no mangos in the fridge, or an accidental extra dose of spice, and they were completely at a loss for what to do.

Next to meet his blade were a set of plump, white mushrooms.

Danny _knew_. He could taste the food and tell if it needed more salt or if it would go well with a certain fruit…

Voices floated over from the family room and Danny looked up. It sounded as though his friends and sister had turned the TV back on.

"_..And further, following the strange fire incident, it has been speculated by the police that this is only the latest in a recent rash of incidents that have been breaking out all over town…"_

Danny frowned thoughtfully as he finished with the vegetables. Checking the meat in the pan he saw it was nice and brown, so he added the stir-fry mix and then tossed in the rest of the vegetables. The water in the pot was boiling steadily, so he pulled out a box of dried noodles and slipped them in, watching the water as it hissed and spat against the intrusion.

With all the food cooking peacefully, Danny let his mind wander. Placing both hands on the counter and leaning forward, dark bangs fell over his eyes but he ignored them. The newscaster was right: there had been an oddly large amount of criminal activity over the past few days: robbery, break-ins, vandalism… Danny had decided to stay out of it, believing it was more the police's job to take care of that stuff. But the strange thing was that no one knew who was doing it. No one ever saw anyone steal the money or break the windows. In fact, if it hadn't been for the fact that none of the ghost detectors around town had gone off, Danny would have thought it was a ghost doing this.

Regardless of Danny's opinion, the police still thought a ghost was behind the incidents. They even went so far as to questioned the validity of his parent's inventions; but Danny, who had been on the receiving end of those same inventions one too many times, knew only too well how well they worked.

But there was something else that was strange, too…as the human criminal rate went up, the ghost rate plummeted.

By plummeted, Danny meant that he hadn't seen neither hide nor hair of a ghost since…

'_Since that incident at the museum four days ago…' _A mental shiver went through the raven-haired boy as he thought about that incident. His left hand unconsciously went to his right shoulder.

The wound… it didn't hurt anymore… but it wasn't exactly gone either. After he had come home from school the day of the field trip, Danny had been dreading the moment that he would have to clean the saliva off his arm. But to his great surprise—and a little relief—when he had finally worked up the nerve to try and peel his shirt off his shoulder it had slid off with unexpected ease. Then, when he'd looked at his arm, he'd gotten another shock: the viscous whitish substance that had covered his shoulder and upper arm was completely gone!

Not a trace remained. And as Danny had stared at his unblemished skin he wondered if he should be happy or worried. But after a moment, when no other options presented themselves, Danny had decided to just put the incident behind him.

But then _that _had started to appear.

Danny hooked a finger around the edge of his collar and pulled it outward, looking down the inside of his shirt. There, just visible on his shoulder against the folds of material, was an ominous shadow.

After realizing that the saliva had vanished, he'd gone directly to bed. But in the morning, while he was taking a shower and changing, he'd seen the slightest hint of discoloration on the spot just above where his right arm met his shoulder. He'd dismissed it at the time. Bruises always darkened before they faded away. The ones on his wrist hadn't given him any trouble, after all.

But the spot only got bigger.

Now about the width of two fingers, it had turned an ugly blackish-blue color. Then, sometimes, ever now and again, it sent shooting pains through his arm and shoulder like a snarling lattice of electricity. It would last 5 maybe 10 seconds, and then it would be gone as though it had never happened.

Danny knew he should tell someone, Sam, Tucker or Jazz. He knew they'd only be angrier at him if they found out he had hid it from them… But what good would it do? They wouldn't be able to stop it; they wouldn't know anything more about it than he did.

Danny had _tried_ to remove it, and all that had accomplished was him nearly ripping all his hair off with the Fenton Extractor (which, as he was now starting to suspect, was probably just an overly powerful vacuum cleaner). None of his parents' inventions even had the slightest effect on the spot, they didn't even register it as abnormal (but then again, Danny himself was one giant, walking, abnormality, so he couldn't really expect one small spot to show up on the big yellow mass that was him). He didn't want to worry them, or so he said to himself.

And then there was the incident just now.

He hadn't been telling the truth when he said he hadn't seen the pillow coming. He'd seen it a mile away; one of the good things about constantly fighting with ghosts who hurl high speed balls of congealed energy at each other was his very acutely developed instincts. His battle conscious mind was so efficient now that during fights it almost seemed like the world slowed around him, allowing him time to think and react accordingly.

When Jazz had thrown the pillow the choices had been, as usual: avoid or go intangible.

Instinctively, he had chosen the latter, as the former tended not to work as well (especially with ghosts, who have a bad habit of making their attacks explode in mid-air), and Danny really had thought he'd gone intangible. Until the pillow hit him.

Lifting a hand to his eyes, Danny let it slowly fade into and out of existence. His powers appeared to be fine, so what had happened before? He hadn't lost control of such a simple power since he'd lost his memory nearly a year ago.

Something yellow sparked in Danny's peripheral vision and he snapped his head around suspiciously. But there was nothing there, just the shiny metal oven and dark cabinets. Danny shook his head self-critically. He was overreacting, seeing things that weren't there... His shoulder itched, reaching up a hand, he scratched at it idly.

A sudden fizzle caught his attention and Danny looked up. Stirring the dinner, he picked up a piece of green pepper with a fork and blew on it before popping it into his mouth. Deciding it could use some more spice, he grabbed a couple from the cupboard, tasting each lightly before deciding on one and sprinkling it in.

Pausing then, Danny frowned at the pan, as though pondering something. Then, shrugging, he grabbed a few cherry tomatoes, washed them and threw them in. For a few minutes he waited, until he knew it was done, and then he took the pan off the stove and shook the stir-fry out onto a plate. Next, he strained out the water from the noodles and let them tumble out into a separate bowl.

"So… what should I use for sauce? Dad likes the sweet stuff, Mom the spicy ones and Jazz the low fat… Hmm, didn't Mom buy that new pickled…something or the other?" Danny was terrible at remembering the names of spices and dressings. But usually he could recognize them on sight, so it didn't matter much. Digging through the fridge, Danny found the sauce he was looking for. Taking a small spoon, he taste tested it.

"Perfect." He muttered, splattering it over the food.

'_Going back to the problem at hand though,'_ Danny continued in his head. '_The lack of ghost attacks has me on edge'._ The last time it had been this quiet in Amity Park the ghosts had been planning an invasion. So Danny's concerns were more than justified.

As such, earlier that day, he had ventured out into the ghost zone to try and track down any signs of life—uhh—afterlife.

But there weren't any… and that was making Danny, very, very nervous.

He had been so restless he'd actually started _studying_! Anything to get his mind to stop thinking about it, and it was actually paying off: he'd gotten an 80 on a recent math test, much to the astonishment of his teacher. And when he'd nearly caused Mr. Lancer to asphyxiate when he'd answered a question correctly in English. He was actually starting to enjoy his newfound brilliance in school. It felt good to finally exceed expectations.

Danny had to admit—though he was probably going to regret saying it later—it was a good thing the ghosts weren't attacking. It gave him an amazing abundance of time. Time he hadn't even realized he'd been missing: time to do his chores, to do his homework, to go out with his friends, play, laugh and have fun.

Eventually Danny decided he would forget about the ghost thing for now. The thing on his shoulder would go away, the ghosts will eventually return and the police would catch whoever was doing all those weird things around town. Danny deserved a break after protecting the town for almost a year. He deserved to have at least some semblance of a normal life. So he would take this opportunity and enjoy it.

Content with his choice, Danny took the food to the table, setting out plates and cutlery as he went.

It wasn't long before he realized what a mistake that decision had been.

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_To Be Continued…_

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Wow… Ok… um, I've never actually _made_ stir-fry, so…um, couldja tell? XD.

To everyone also reading my Beyblade story, I'm sorry! I know you're probably ready to throw me out a window for updating this first, but I really did mean to have the chapter finished by now! I've hit a small snag, but I'll try to get it up as soon as possible!

**Thunderstorm101:** Yes, Danny's just so cute isn't he? I would totally want a brother like him :P I like it when Danny acts all sweet, like he does so often in the show… but you're right: his touch with reality is definitely questionable… and it's only going to get worse (_evil chuckle_).

**sciencefreak330:** Hm… (_taps finger on chin thoughtfully_) You know, I really want to see Danny beat Dash up too! I always imagined Dash would try to hit on Jazz (since he's already a bully, and in the show he seemed to like Jazz), and Danny—being Danny, XD—would of _course_ try to do something stupid and heroic… So maybe if you just hold on to that thought… XP

**ArmoredSoul:** Wow, I think that's the longest review you've sent me yet! XD Did Dash's perverted-ness hit a nerve? I don't blame you, I hate him too! Yes! Go you! Beat that bas—er…pig up! XP

**Moonstar5569:** Hey! Thanks for the review, and I hope you liked this chapter too!

**Wishes for Wings:** Yeah I know what you mean…but I love a bashful Danny too, he just wouldn't be the same if he started ego-tripping, flaunting his powers and taking credit for everything he did :) But maybe… Maybe… he might just get his chance to get even… maybe… XP

**Kyelor:** HI!!(add excessive exclamation mark usage here) I'm so glad you're back! I was worried :) I sympathize though. I just got done with my exams a couple of weeks ago and JUST got my marks yesterday… I did well enough to keep my scholarship, which is very, very good news, so at least I can enjoy my holidays now! I hope you did well too! I'm glad you're liking these chapters so far (and I can't wait for your reviews on Sooryavansham! I know the chapters are long, so I can wait…_twitch_…yes, I can wait…_twitch_ XD). And you're right, I had no idea how Danny would communicate 'I'm a GOOD guy' to the Asian couple… I tried to picture what I would do… and yeah… heh heh, that was the best I could come up with XP. The evil figure in the window was supposed to be playful-sinister, so I think you got the right impression. I might not have added as much description as usual with that part, mainly because I wanted to make it more… I don't know… urgent…or something like that… Oh and you know about 'Ahriman'? Do you know what it means? I actually found the term once in my Thesaurus (now fondly dubbed 'Thessy' after having gone through many fanfiction chapters with me XD) and I thought it sounded interesting. So I looked it up. So… if you know what it means, then you're probably wondering why on Earth I made the Asian couple say ? Well… heh heh, it'll all come, eventually! You know, I love Danny-Jazz interaction! But hardly any authors really delve into the relationship they have, instead focusing more on romance. I'm not saying romance is a bad thing, but it's always taking over the fanfiction, and that's just annoying, don't you think? Anyway, I'm really glad you're back (just look at the size of the response to tell!), oh and don't even think about calling me Sholay–san! We're friends, right? So, it's just Sholay, please XD. Oh and hope you're enjoying the Holidays!

**MutantLover09:** NO! You CAN'T say beware at the end of all your sentences! If you do… if you do… (_thinks for a second_)… I'll… I'll sick Klemper on you! Yeah! I'll do that! Wait um… (_note floats down from above_) Ok… what's this? (_reads : 'All use of characters in fandom __**Danny Phantom**__ are constrained only by the laws of Fanfiction and cannot be used to harass, coerce or otherwise threaten Real World Objects. Thank you'_) Ok…um… (_rips paper up_) You didn't see any of that, right?... Yes, sorry, that was a little random, Unfortunately it's past 2 in the morning here and I get a little…eheh… shall we say, weird, in the wee hours of the morning…XD Anyway, glad you liked the character interaction in the last chapter, I think I tend to write a lot of that, so you can expect more of it in the coming chapters… At any rate I hope you liked this chapter!

**Happy Holidays!**


	7. Fight

**Hiya!**

I have a feeling you guys are going to like this one... Maybe... (grin)

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom is the property of Butch Hartman.

Enjoy

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

-By Sholay

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_**Chapter 7 — **__Fight_

Danny shifted eagerly in his seat. They were getting that test back today: the one on the museum. Mr. Lancer had explicitly warned them that they'd be having the test, but in spite of this, more than half the class had groaned in various states of shock and dismay when the English teacher had come to school a few days ago towing a huge stack of papers in his wake.

Everyone, even Sam and Tucker, had complained for days about how difficult the test had been: how unfair, how evil… Everyone that is, except Danny. His friends couldn't make heads or tails of why on Earth their dark-haired friend seemed so happy to get his test back; he usually loathed these events more then anyone.

But, even though he hadn't told them it, Danny just _knew_ he'd done well in the test; he could feel it… He'd spent so much time over the past couple of weeks researching the museum that he even knew why they'd placed all those little 'out-of-order' signs over the water fountains.

However, Danny didn't want to tempt karma by gloating before he got his mark back. So instead, he sat anxiously perched on the edge of his seat, knee jerking up and down spasmodically as he watched Mr. Lancer, who, with painstaking slowness, pulled the tests out of his bag, checked them, rechecked them, ordered them and then ambled over to check his computer… Danny suppressed an sigh of aggravation.

Now as for _why_ Danny had done so much research on the museum… well, it hadn't exactly been for school credit. After he'd had that run-in with the Hound, Danny had dedicated himself to finding out everything he possibly could about the museum… without actually having to set foot into it.

Mr. Lancer made his way up the rows with the pace of an old snail.

Maybe he was being childish, but Danny really, really didn't want to go back there. Every time he thought about it he got such a violent sense of foreboding that his mind literally shied away from the thought. And if he couldn't even _think_ about going back, how could he ever hope to physically do it? He knew that he'd made a promise to return to that couple, but Danny figured that, human or not, they were probably long gone from that room. Besides, if they weren't human, then Danny wasn't too sure he wanted to keep that promise.

Danny jumped as he realized Mr. Lancer was now directly in front of his desk. He pulled his gaze upward to meet his teacher's with a look of vague panic in his eyes. To his shock, Mr. Lancer smiled back down at him.

"Now this is an example of what hard work and dedication can do. Mr. Fenton here has received a 98 percent, the highest mark in this class. You should all strive to achieve this sort of exemplary work."

Complete silence befell the class.

Danny looked down, stupefied, as the big, red, encircled 98 slid into his view. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up, his eyes wide.

"Congratulations, Mr. Fenton." Lancer gave him a small smile before moving on to dispassionately slap another test down on Tucker's desk, who took one look at his mark before groaning and dropping his head into his arms.

Still in shock, Danny opened his mouth as though to respond, but when nothing came out he closed it again. Picking up the test gingerly, like it could break into a thousand pieces at any moment, he stared.

'_Wow,'_ Danny thought. '_I haven't done this well in school since… well… before the accident.'_ The accident, of course, being that fateful day when he'd activated the Fenton Portal and gained his ghostly alter ego. Danny felt a grin break out on his face and a quiet 'yes!' passed his lips.

Then something cold and slimy smacked into his neck.

With a gasp, Danny reached up and swiped the wet, gooey thing off, but it took a bit more rubbing too get rid of the cool, oozing feeling of spit trailing down his neck.

'_Spitball'_ He identified in an oddly detached manner. Slowly, his head turned and his gaze caught a murderous pair of eyes—the colour of a darkening bruise—staring straight at him.

'_Surprise, surprise, it's Dash.'_ Danny's own eyes narrowed as he engaged in a silent battle of wills against the jock. Eventually though, the edge of Dash's lip curled up in a disgusted sneer; he mouthed the word '_f__reak'_ clearly then turned to Paulina, who was sitting in front of him. Danny watched, something in his chest constricting involuntarily as he watched the guy who bullied him on a regular basis and the girl he secretly had a crush on gossip in whispers, pointing in his direction, and _laughing_.

With sudden a burst of anger, Danny snarled, his eyes flashing briefly. One of the legs holding up Dash's table flickered briefly out of existence and with a yelp Dash fell forward, tumbling to the ground with a loud crash. Paulina let out a high shriek and the rest of the class laughed while Lancer effused some pedantic expletive.

Danny, too, snickered as he watched Dash painfully disentangle himself from the table and pull himself to his feet, staring at his toppled, but otherwise normal-looking, desk in dumb confusion.

"_Danny!_" Sam leaned over and hissed. Danny looked over at her, raising an eyebrow.

"_What do you think you're doing?! You can't just go around abusing your powers! Remember what happened last time? And what if someone saw you?_"

"_Sam, don't be such a wet blanket,_" Tucker whispered in return from the desk in front of Danny. Then he looked at Danny, a wide grin growing on his face. "_Dude that was awesome!_"

"_You be quiet._" Sam shot at him. Tucker huffed. "_And you!_" She switched to Danny. "_This isn't like you Danny._"

Danny swallowed, a light frown dusting his features.

'_She's taking all the fun out of it.'_ This thought floated across Danny's mind, but it seemed wrong somehow. '_But she's right, you've been acting strange lately, getting angry too easily, seeing things…'_ It left a bitter taste in Danny's mouth, but he agreed more with this second statement.

Danny had found his temper shortening, very subtly, over the past few weeks. What he used to be able to brush off now sent a hot iron of rage through him. Small insignificant details made him grumpy and irritable for the whole day.

Take Dash, for instance, Danny used to be able to calmly stare at the jock as he insulted him into the ground, then punched him there. Now Danny had to go out of his way to avoid Dash, just incase a word, or a phrase, accidentally set him off and he did something he'd regret.

But it wasn't just Dash that set him off recently. Just yesterday, Sam, Tucker and him had gotten into a petty argument, involving something so small and meaningless Danny still couldn't understand why he'd blown up: Sam and Tucker had been having one of their usual 'heated discussions' and Danny, utterly sick of their squabbling, had called Tucker shallow and Sam mule-headed.

He'd apologized, almost immediately; he honestly didn't know why those words had come out of his mouth. But the damage had been done and Sam and Tucker had been cool—limited to less than one word answers—with him for the rest of the day.

The bell rang, signaling the end of school and shattering Danny's thoughts. With a sigh, he detached his hand from the firm grip he'd maintained on his test. Smoothing the paper out, he looked with slight regret at the deep creases now distorting the proud 98. Sliding the test into one of his textbooks, he packed his backpack.

"Mr. Fenton, if you could stay a moment?"

Danny looked up questioningly, but relaxed when he saw the benign look Mr. Lancer was wearing. Shrugging, he looked to Sam and Tucker, who raised their eyebrows at him. He nodded and they understood, picking up their backpacks and moving toward the door. They were so well in tune that Danny knew for certain that they'd be waiting for him to join them near his locker.

Dash, however, seemed to have other plans. As the blond jock exited the door after Sam and Tucker he made a small gesture between Danny and him, flashing a toothy, feral grin. Danny sighed once more.

_'Maybe I'll have enough time to go ghost and fly outta here before Dash sees me.' _It was a futile thought though; Danny just wasn't that lucky.

Danny approached his teacher's desk unenthusiastically. Placing his backpack on the ground against the table's leg, the teen thrust his hands deep into his jeans' pockets, his posture slouching, and waited.

"Mr. Fenton," Mr. Lancer swung around from the computer on his desk and Danny briefly saw something familiar and colorful flash on the screen before it went blank.

'_Was Mr. Lancer playing __**Doomed?**'_ Danny stared.

"When I first met you, you seemed to be a very quiet boy—introverted, but full of potential." Danny's eyes shifted back to Mr. Lancer as he began to speak, silently hoping the man wasn't going to turn this into a lecture. "I watched as that potential grew. You flourished in certain areas but struggled in others. You had the capability to be brilliant but there was always something stopping you, whether it was lack of motivation… or, perhaps, motivation to do exactly the opposite…" Mr. Lancer's voice trailed off regretfully and if Danny didn't know any better he'd have thought his teacher was referring to Dash and his group of bullies.

"But then something happened." Mr. Lancer gazed intently at Danny and he shifted under his teacher's shrewd eyes. "Suddenly all that potential seemed to disappear. Your grades, your attitude, your motivation, everything went downhill. You were always coming late to class, sometimes not even coming at all. You showed complete disregard for school and authority and slowly, though I am loathed to admit it, I began to think I was mistaken about your potential." Again, the teacher paused.

Danny sucked on his tongue, wondered if there was a point to this.

"But Danny," Suddenly Mr. Lancer leaned forward in his seat, steepling his hands and Danny, caught off guard, snapped his head up. Why the sudden drop in formality? Danny didn't think Mr. Lancer ever called any of his students by their first names. "Over the past few weeks you've shown incredible change. You've come to every class, actually paid attention, actually _known_ the material and moreover, you've given insightful answers in your tests." The balding teacher let out a short bark of laughter. "I never knew the museum had all those 'out of order' drinking fountains as an environmental statement against wasting water."

One corner of Danny's lips quirked upward.

"Look, Danny, what I'm trying to say here is…" The teacher paused, as though uncomfortable about his words. "I believe that you can be one of my best students, Danny, if only you'd _apply _yourself."

Danny's eyes widened and he leaned back in surprise. "Sir, I—"

"I'm not trying to…ehem…" Lancer leaned back, pulling out a well used book—'How to be Hip for the Unhip', Danny read, stifling a snort of laughter—and thumbing through the dog-eared pages. "'Rag-on-your-groove' as you children put it. I just want you to know that I'm here if you ever need to talk."

Danny let out a low, conceding chuckle. "Okay, sir. I'll keep that in mind."

After bidding his teacher goodbye, Danny stepped quietly out of the classroom. After closing the door carefully behind him, he turned and leaned heavily on the frame, letting a burst of air escape his mouth.

Danny didn't know what kind of game Lancer was playing… maybe he wanted to win the 'Best Teacher of the Year' award or something, but Danny wished he'd just lay off. Looking through his bangs, the teen raised a hand and ran it through his messy hair. He knew Lancer didn't really care, he just _knew_ it, so why did the man even bother pretending? It was annoying, and manipulative, trying to get Danny to _confide_ in him, of all things!

Danny laughed quietly, cynically. He'd stopped confiding in _anyone _after the Spectra incident. The only exceptions to that rule were Sam and Tucker… and Jazz, more recently.

Danny hoped Lancer would just forget—

"FENTON!"

"And that's my cue." With that, Danny sped off in the opposite direction, followed only seconds later by Dash who thumped by with footsteps that shook the ground.

"_Earthquake Terror!_ What is going on out there!" Mr. Lancer poked his head out of his doorway, just in time to see Dash disappear around a corner.

"…Merciful heavens, I'm a teacher! If I'd wanted to join the Olympic running team, I would have done track in High School instead of cheerleading." Nonetheless, Mr. Lancer set off down the corridor to see what disturbance his students were causing now.

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This was not good.

Danny looked all around, furtively trying to find any escape without turning his back on the boy in front of him.

Unfortunately, Dash had apparently gotten tired of having Danny always run away from him, so he'd called on all his thug friends to back him up. A large group of jocks, cheerleaders and other unknown faces had ambushed Danny right outside the school in the empty parking lot—foiling his plan to ditch Dash and fly off invisible—and were now forming a tight ring around him and the bulky quarterback.

Danny usually wouldn't have been too worried; he wasn't afraid of taking a few punches. Then he could just fall over and pretend he was sorry.

But they weren't planning on punching him.

Danny eyed the large wooden baseball bat in Dash's hands warily as they circled one another. The much larger teen grinned and slapped the bat into his palm a few times. Behind him and all around, a number of jocks also held bats while others cried 'Fight! Fight!'. Danny wasn't sure, but he thought he could hear Sam and Tucker's panicked cries from somewhere far into the crowd. But they wouldn't be able to help him now.

Danny crouched lower and raised his hands. But instead of curling them into fists, he opted for a less aggressive front: keeping his fingers spread, a deceptively defensive move he'd seen his mother use on more than one occasion. One swing from Dash and Danny would spin away completely and grab the bat, yanking it out of the unsuspecting idiot's hands. The one catch was that in order to pull it off, he would have to move very fast.

Danny wasn't really worried about that.

"You're through, Fentina! This time I'm gonna beat you so hard you're gonna wish your fat mother never had you!" Dash grinned as he and Danny continued circling each other. He scanned the crowd with a smug grin, there was no way Fenton was going to weasel his way out of this one. The jock's eyes were lit up at the thought of finally having complete power over his favorite punching bag.

"Don't you talk about my mother!" Danny defensive outburst came without him even thinking about it.

"Fine, then." Dash leered. "Why don't we talk about your hot sister?"

There was absolutely nothing new about Dash's insults—nothing Danny hadn't heard a hundred times—yet it was the last straw and red flashed before his eyes.

Danny let out an inarticulate cry as he leapt at the jock. Dash, caught off guard, stumbled back a bit. Then his football instincts kicked in. He reacted in the first way he thought of: he swung the bat around in a wide arc and smashed it into Danny's shoulder brutally.

"AH!" Danny's cry was cut short as he felt a searing pain shoot through his arm and shoulder. Mid-leap, he was suddenly thrown viciously to the side where he hit the asphalt violently, rolling a few times before coming to a stop. The crowd washed away from him, moving back before he could touch them, but immediately formed the circle back again.

A hush swept through the audience, no one could believe what had happened. School fights were one thing and intimidation was normal… but beating someone with a baseball bat was at a completely different level. It was the invisible line between choice and mob mentality. No one knew how to react. Like scared lambs they each looked to one another, seeking a leader, or a scapegoat.

Then Danny groaned and shifted. Sparks of pain raced up and down his arm, but were concentrated mostly around his upper arm. Pulling himself up to his knees he touched the tender area briefly.

He knew Dash was a bully… but he had not idea he had it in him to do _this_.

Slowly, Danny looked up, eyes carefully neutral. He saw Dash staring at the bat in his hands with something akin to shock. Then the blond raised his head and met Danny's eyes. Time seemed to stop as they stared at one another, one calculating, the other stunned. Uncertainty was clear in Dash's eyes and the bat lowered.

It was the moment of reckoning: to fight or to back down. It was the time for that choice, that single choice that separated the humans from the beasts.

"YEAH MAN, GIVE THAT FREAK WHAT HE DESERVES!"

Chaos reigned.

Danny had to roll sideways to avoid a bat as someone swung at him—then jump up and backpedal to avoid another one. He ran straight into Dash who looked frozen for a moment. They exchanged glances and for a moment Danny wondered if Dash would back down.

But then the jock's face darkened and with a rough 'Get off me Fen-TURD' Dash shoved Danny hard into the screaming crowd. Danny stumbled and fell against a few people. With a roar they pushed him back and Danny stumbled backward, pin wheeling his arms wildly.

"What's your problem anyway?!" Danny yelled angrily wiping away a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth; one of the faceless mob had managed to clip him across the face. "Do you get off on this or something? Picking on the defenseless geek? Does it make you feel _good_ Dash? Does it make you feel _powerful_?" Danny sneered at the blond, who looked momentarily taken aback before his eyes hardened with rage.

"You think you're something don't you?" Dash hissed furiously, advancing until Danny had to look up to see the other boy's face. The crowd hushed and tremors of anticipation ran through the ranks. "You and your bitchy little girlfriend and your pathetic walking computer—"

"Don't you—" Danny began angrily but was cut off but Dash's finger prodding his chest.

"YOU think you can just walk all around MY school like you've got any RIGHT to BE here!" Dash punctuated this with a hard jab and Danny backed up. Dash moved forward, not loosing his advantage.

"But guess what Fenton?" Now the barrel-chested quarterback leaned in until they were nearly nose to nose. Danny could smell fish on the jock's breath, probably remnants from lunch.

'_Everyone has bad breath these days'. _Danny thought idly; first the Hound, then that evil doppelganger in the window, now Dash. If only every bad guy out there had bad breath, it would make identifying them much easier. He used the thought to distance himself from the fight.

Danny wrinkled his nose in disgust and moved his head back, but Dash, still ranting, didn't seem to notice. "Take away the witch and the smart-ass and what do you have?" He paused, but when Danny wasn't forthcoming with an answer he supplied one himself. "Nothing." And with a malicious smirk, Dash leaned back, crossing his arms. Suddenly, Danny couldn't help but listen, his attention riveted to what the jock was saying.

"You're nothing, Fenton, not a geek, not a nerd, a jock or anything else. You're just some creepy kid with a freaky family. Everyone knows it and NO ONE likes you. I bet even your _friends _think you're a freak…" Dash studied Danny for a moment. Danny fought back a snarl, the words cutting deeper than they should have. "You know, I think you KNOW that. You know you're a loser, a worthless waste of space… I bet I'm even doing you a _favor_ by beating you up. It's the only time you're actually useful for something, _loser_."

'_**No one talks to you like that!'**_

Danny didn't know what happened. One minute he could feel the simmering rage boiling safely behind a dam of self-control. Next thing he knew, that control was gone and he was rushing at Dash.

With the agility of a snake, he felt his body weave and duck to avoid the other's surprised, frantic swings. Then, in a haze of frightening detachment, he straightened, stared Dash straight on, brought up one fist and punched him—hard. Dash staggered, but Danny didn't stop. His foot came next, thrusting out in a vicious sidekick that sent the burly jock flying.

It was like Danny had flipped the off switch on his consciousness. Nothing crossed his mind as he advanced slowly on Dash: no sense that this was wrong—even as he smoothly stooped to scoop up the fallen bat, barely pausing in his stride—no sense of conscience, even as he saw Dash groan and roll painfully on the hard asphalt.

He was empty.

Utterly blank.

The crowd was silent, watching in morbid fascination as once shy, wimpy Danny Fenton, leveled the strongest guy at school without even breaking a sweat. They were struck dumb as the same scrawny, awkward boy—unpopular, but always easy going, never malicious—seemed to have cracked. Fascination turned to silent horror as they saw the remorseless glint in Danny's eyes.

The realization came to all of them and none of them all at once… He wasn't going to stop…

"_LORD OF THE FLIES!_ STOP THIS ABERRANT MANIFESTATION OF SHAMELESS LAWLESSNESS AT ONCE!"

This ringing call, so strange… and so familiar, sent a jarring shock of thought to Danny's head.

'_Stop?'_

And with this single thought, it was like a flood had been unleashed.

'_What? Stop what? Who—Mr. Lancer?'_

Danny gazed around, his eyes glassy and somewhat unfocussed. He saw the crowd around him, which only served to confuse him further. A rush of fear tingled over his body, though he had no idea why.

A groan alerted him to the presence of another body lying not far from him.

'_Dash?'_

Danny looked down in bewildered curiosity at the once proud jock, now on his knees, clutching at his stomach in obvious pain. Dash attempted to stand, a few people finally snapping out of their stupor to assist him. As the quarterback sluggishly raised his head Danny saw a massive bruise staining the entire left side of his face bright red. Blood dribbled slowly down the corner of the blond's mouth. Some girl screamed and with a snarl Dash yanked his arms away from his helpers. Wiping the back of one hand across his chin, the teen scowled at the sight of his own blood. Turning his head to the side, he made a loud slurping sound: gathering the spit and blood in his mouth before spitting it out in a phlegmy glob. A few people let out sounds of disgust. Danny's eyebrows raised in surprise and maybe a little concern.

"MR. FENTON! DROP THAT BASEBALL BAT IMMEDIATELY!"

Startled by the sudden call, Danny spun around. Disoriented though he was, there was no way he could miss the shudder of fear than ran through the people nearest to him as they tried to flinch further away. Danny looked at the person who'd called him.

"Mr. Lancer?" Danny asked softly. He frowned a little. He didn't understand.

"Daniel…" Mr. Lancer now continued in a softer tone, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. It was like he was talking to some wild animal. "No one needs to get hurt… Just put the bat down."

"Bat?" Danny asked himself. Puzzled, he looked down at his hands.

Then, with a sudden cold, tightening of his heart, he saw it: a long wooden baseball bat clutched firmly in his hand. Danny stopped breathing. There, right on the edge of the bat, was a small dark stain… the telltale color of blood.

With sudden, startling realization, Danny remembered what he'd done… _What he'd nearly done._

The bat fell from his boneless hand, clattering hollowly against the ground.

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_To Be Continued…_

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Yes! For all of you who wanted to see Danny beat Dash up! XD Too bad I had to go and twist it, huh?

**Wishes for Wings:** Ehe he he… What exactly did you consider to be 'carried away'? XD Poor Danny… Anyway, irregardless of the violence, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Oh and thanks for the hug! Here, have some virtual holiday cake! It's very good; it changes to your favorite flavor _and_ has practically no calories! XD

**sciencefreak330:** Hiya again! I really hope you liked this chapter; I had you in mind while I was making it, please tell me what you thought!

**ArmoredSoul:** Yay! I actually asked my mom for details on how to make stir-fry, then used my imagination to flesh it out. I always imagined Danny to be the cook in the house, so I just _had_ to put it in :P. Oh, and what did you think about _this _chapter?! Danny finally got Dash back, albeit not in the way we would have really wanted XP.

**MutantLover09:** Yes… I hate notes that fall out of nowhere… actually I generally hate anything that falls out of nowhere… like big, BIG stone blocks. I can feel one looming for this story… even though I know _exactly_ where I plan on going with the plot… I just have no idea how to get there…ugh… Maybe I can postpone the inevitable painful squishing for another few weeks (_not likely_) Awww shaddup, inner muse thingy! (…) Ok yes, I admit, I'm a bit weird XP. But did you really expect any different from someone who writes weird, twisted stuff like this? XD

**Thunderstorm101:** Yeah, Danny does seem to have some kind of karmic 'kick me' sign on his back, doesn't he? But that's what makes him so much fun to play with! (pinches cheeks of Danny plushie) XD. Anyway, you're exactly right: there is something very suspicious about the rise in human crime (I'm really glad you noticed that! I was worried that I'd made the hint too subtle!). Anyway, what did you think about this chapter? I don't know whether to feel sorry for Dash or go up and punch him myself… :3

**Quick-demon:** Yeah, you know, I always thought of Danny being the one who cooks in the family (I mean his parents create mutant hot dogs for goodness sake! And Jazz wouldn't be able to handle a flour spill XP). And the scene of imagining him whipping up dinner was just too much fun for me to pass up! Just like this fight (sorry, Danny!), I couldn't help myself! Oh and I hope you had/are having a good holiday too!

**Nylah:** You know, I can't believe you're reading my fic! I've read some of your stories ('_The House'_) and they're very good! And so depressing! I could actually picture everything as it happened in your story, it was so well described. Anyway, ha, ha, so you have no idea what's going on in the story? And you're still interested? That's great! That means I'm doing my job! Now if only I could extract my dratted rent-a-muse from under the bed (she's been hiding down there since this semester of University started… I think she fears my impending Political Science essay… huh… Guess I have to go find the crowbar again…).At any rate, please tell me what you thought of this chapter!

**Adio!**


	8. Just for Once

**Chapter 8**

AHHH +1000 hits and almost 50 reviews!! (_faints_)

(20 minutes later) (_W__akes up_) Huh? What? OH! The story! Right-ho! Let's get this thing on the go!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny Phantom. I own the plot though and I enjoy every morbid moment of it XD

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

-By Sholay

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_**Chapter 8 — **__Just for Once…_

Danny fell heavily into the hard wooden chair outside the principle's office, ignoring the disparaging stare the secretary shot him. Leaning forward into a hunch, elbows resting on his knees, he buried his head deep into his hands.

"What did I do? What did I do?" He murmured to himself, almost inaudibly. Slowly, he moved his head upward until he was cupping his nose and mouth with his hands; his eyes stared straight ahead, stared at nothing

He'd never lost it that bad before. Why now? What was going on with him recently?

A flash of yellow in his peripheral vision had Danny swiveling sharply to the side. A low growl of frustration escaped him when he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"_Mr. Fenton_"

Danny looked up at the low warning from the secretary. He blushed in embarrassment when he realized he'd basically been glaring angrily at air. Dispirited, he sunk back into his seat. '_Great'_ He bemoaned. '_Yet another person to add to my ever-growing 'Thinks Fenton's a Basket Case' list'_.

But even as he leaned back—closing his eyes in an attempt to just sit and wait for his parents to arrive, like a defeated criminal on death row— all he could see behind his eyelids was his fist as it smashed into Dash's face. Over and over: the feeling of flesh yielding under his knuckles, the satisfying contact of his foot full on Dash's hard chest, pushing it away, the feeling of letting it all _go _and finally giving it all back. Years of being pushed around, being ignored, being shoved into lockers… No more holding back… Again and again, seeing Dash lying there on the ground, broken, bleeding… Finally, _finally_, he knew what it was like to be on the other side. And standing above him, bat in hand, Danny was the one with the power. He had held not a mere piece of wood in his hands, but Dash's very _life_…

"_No_," Danny abruptly hissed, alarmed at his train of thought. Eyes shooting open and wide, he wondered where all this hate was coming from. Sure, he didn't like getting pushed around by the pompous jock, but he'd never, _ever_ thought of getting back at him by beating him up… He would never hurt someone intentionally… Not a human, at least… Right?

"I couldn't… I _wouldn't_." He stressed, making sure to keep his voice down.

He closed his eyes and rubbed them with cold, clammy palms, as though to dispel the images plaguing his mind. But all this accomplished was to create another flash of yellow sparking across the darkness of his eyelids.

Danny pushing the heel of one hand into his forehead with growing desperation. He couldn't take much more of this: the mood swings, the strange urges, the hallucinations…

What was worse, Danny thought, clenching his teeth, was that yellow light he kept seeing… In the corner of his eye, a fleeting flash of sickly yellow. Just out of his grasp, the foul thing sat, waiting, mocking, laughing at him… That colour… It was the exact same colour as the eyes of the Hound. It disturbed him, made him sick… left him paranoid. Exhausted. He hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in days. Every hour of the day, every minute, every second, it was like there was an extra pair of eyes on him, watching, waiting, patiently waiting for him to let his guard down, to relax or to stumble, fall or flounder, and the second he did…

"Danny!"

"Danny!"

A chorus of yells shattered his thoughts and with a muffled groan Danny slid his palm up over his face, raking his fingers through his hair. He knew what was coming.

"Dude! What did you do?!"

"Danny! I _told _you not to abuse your… _abilities_, and you off and decide to _beat up Dash_?"

"Eh_HEM_."

Sam and Tucker instantly deflated under the secretary's incensed stare, mumbling hushed 'Sorry Miss's. The instant the woman turned back to her work, Sam and Tucker sat down on either side of Danny, leaning in to continue the conversation. Danny looked down, trying to resist the urge to bury his head in his hands once more.

"Danny, look, whatever's been going on with you lately, you _can_ tell us, you know." Sam said in a quiet whisper.

"Yeah, you can't just keep it all in there. You'll burst… like you did on Dash… Though, I have to admit: the way you nailed him! Right in his fat, ugly—"

"_Tucker_." Sam groaned and Tucker gave a sheepish grin.

"Right. Not the point. Sorry."

Sam turned back to Danny. "Why did you just go off the hook like that? Usually you're more careful than that."

"I-I don't…" Danny didn't know what to say. His eyes flickered to her face, then back down.

"Sam, the guy had a bat. What was Danny supposed to do?" Tucker jumped in defensively.

"Not what he did!" Sam shot back, her voice rising. Receiving a nasty look from the secretary, Sam's voice lowered to a dangerous whisper. "He could have reasoned with him, called for a teacher… done _anything _else."

"_Reason_?!…With _Dash_?!" Tucker crowed incredulously.

"Well he didn't have to pick up the bat!" She retaliated.

"…It's not like he hit him with it—"

"_Guys!_" Danny slapped his hands down on his legs and looked sharply at first Tucker then Sam. "Just _stop_ already, okay?...Just, just stop… please…" His gaze fell, eyes focusing on his whitening knuckles as his fingers curled tightly around his jeans. At this uncharacteristic show of vulnerability both Sam and Tucker immediately sent Danny twin looks of concern.

"Danny… Tell us what's wrong, you have to tell us, or we can't help you." Sam laid a hand on his shoulder but he didn't respond. She squeezed, but jerked back when he flinched. For a few seconds, silence fell over the trio. But then Sam took a breath. She would not be deterred so easily. "Start at the beginning. First, why did you loose it with Dash?"

Technically, that wasn't the beginning. But nonetheless…"I… I don't know." Danny ran a shaky hand through his hair, rested it on the back of his neck. "I don't remember…"

"You don't remember?" Suddenly Sam's tone hardened and her eyes narrowed, on the other side of Danny, Tucker frowned. "You mean—"

"No, not like that… I wasn't being controlled… I don't think so." Danny said slowly. "I do remember, sort of…"

"Danny, either you remember, or you don't, it's not rocket science." Tucker cut in, exasperation clear in his tone.

"It's not that simple!" Danny cried and suddenly jumped to his feet, spinning around to face his shocked friends.

"_Mr. Fenton, Ms. Manson and Mr. Foley,_ if you don't control yourselves _this instant,_ I will have you three _removed _from the office, then _you_ can explain your behaviour to the _principal_." The secretary's haw-like eyes focused specifically on Danny and he drew in a shuddering breath. Suddenly he felt stifled in this too small room: surrounded by people who were suppressing him.

"I didn't do it…" he muttered, "I didn't… I didn't mean to… I wasn't going to…" Suddenly a shock of pain speared his right shoulder and with a gasp Danny stiffened.

"Danny?" In a second, Sam and Tucker had stood.

"Mr. Fenton, is there something I can help you with?" The secretary glanced disapprovingly at him over thick glasses.

"Yes… m-may I use the washroom?" Danny hesitated as another warning spike of pain dug into his shoulder, this time moving down his arm.

"Mr. Fenton, might I remind you that you are here waiting for your parents to arrive for a disciplinary hearing with the principal?"

"Yes, ma'am, I know." Danny grit his teeth as his arm suddenly spasmed. Reaching over, he gripped his right wrist tightly in his left hand in an effort to suppress the motion. Luckily his back was turned to Sam and Tucker, so he didn't think they noticed. "But please, I'll be back really quickly. I promise."

"Well…" The secretary paused, considering the possible trouble she could get into versus the benefit of having a few moments of peace. "I suppose it would—"

"Thanks ma'am!" Danny was out the door and running before she could even finish, Sam and Tucker rushing to follow.

"No running in the halls!" She called after them fruitlessly. Sighing loudly, she recalled wistfully the high class, assistant's job for that rich bachelor in Wisconsin she'd turned down. She'd thought it'd be fun to come back to her old high school. What a laugh. She shook her head in consternation and turned back to her work. "Teenagers, ugh."

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"DANNY!"

"DANNY, WAIT!"

But Danny didn't slow down. The spasms were getting worse and he needed to get somewhere private—fast.

Finally spotting the male washroom, he took no time in slamming the door open with his good shoulder and stumbling inside. No one was in there… of course; school was long over… but Danny could hear Tucker and Sam following not far behind him and he quickly ducked into a stall, closing—locking**_—_**the door behind him.

Falling against the stall door, Danny fought the urge to slip to his knees. He gripped his wrist tighter, trying to control his hand as it tensed into a painful claw and refused to relax. It was like a hot poker was being driven straight into his shoulder sending shocks of pain arcing down his arm. He bit his lip.

"Danny? Man, are you okay in there?" Tucker's hesitant call came from somewhere outside.

"No-no-no… not _now_, not _now_." He murmured. His hand twitched again and he quickly bit his lip again to stifle a cry. He threw his head back. This was bad, much worse than any time before… Usually it just itched, or felt tender to the touch… '_Why? What is this?'_

"Danny? Come on Danny, this isn't funny." Now Sam's voice joined Tucker's. A harsh laugh passed between Danny's clenched teeth as he thought of how worried his friends must be for Sam to set foot inside a boy's washroom.

"Danny, answer us or I swear we're coming in."

"I'm fine." He bit out, well aware of how strained his voice sounded.

"Danny, you know very well we're not falling for that one."

All at once, it stopped. The pain, the spasms, everything just vanished so suddenly Danny's knees gave way and he crumbled to the ground. Pale and trembling, he sat there, back against the corner, legs bent at odd angles. He panted, feeling the last traces of phantom pain chase their way up and down his arm to his shoulder. Fuzzily, he thought he could make out someone calling him, but nothing was registering in his mind. Nothing but relief that it was over… The pain…had stopped…

"DANNY! ARE YOU OKAY? OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW!"

"I'm fine." This came out too high so Danny swallowed, tried again. "I'm fine." Glancing down at his hands—left still wrapped protectively around the right and the right still frozen in a tense claw—he forcefully detached his left hand. It came apart with a wet, sweaty sound. Next, he tried to curl his right hand into a fist, but when it refused to budge he began to knead the palm and finger muscles with his left hand. Slowly, with both pain and relief, he was able to pull his fingers together. They still tingled and trembled… but it would have to do.

"DANNY—!"

"Alright, alright, I'm coming." He answered, not loudly, but with enough conviction to stop the thumping on the door.

Sluggishly, as though moving through water, Danny pulled himself to his feet using the back of the toilet and the wall. Then, reaching out, he flipped the lock, bracing himself for the inevitable—

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST LOCKED US OUT LIKE THAT!" Suddenly wide-eyed, Danny took a step back, starting badly as Sam's sudden explosion overwhelmed him. "WE'VE BEEN FRIENDS WITH EACH OTHER FOREVER! WE DON'T KEEP SECRETS FROM EACH OTHER; HOW DARE YOU JUST SHUT US OUT OF YOUR LIFE LIKE THIS?!" She sounded upset, almost as though she was on the verge of tears. Danny winced and lowered his eyes. He had no idea, never realized how much his actions had been taking their toll on his friends…

… His mood swings, his evasiveness… Was this the last straw?

"Well, _fine _then." Sam's voice dropped harshly. "If we're not _good enough_ for you to spend your time on, then maybe _I_ don't want to waste _my time _on _you_!" And then, to Danny's shock, she spun on her heel and strode right out of the washroom.

"Whu—wai—Sam!" His stuttered call was too late, she'd already gone. Danny stared at the spot where she'd disappeared, mouth slightly agape.

"She's only worried, Danny." Tucker intoned quietly and Danny's attention switched to his other best friend. "But it's not just her, you know." Tucker's eyes suddenly gained a serious gleam in them that Danny didn't usually see in his easygoing friend. "You've been acting weird for awhile now. First, there was that thing at the museum, which you got all secretive about… Then you started getting all moody all the time, I mean we can't even say anything around you without worrying if you'll blow up at us randomly or something."

Danny looked away, a bitter taste on his tongue as he thought, briefly, of how Tucker and Sam couldn't even_ talk _to each other without blowing up.

What? Was he supposed to be their unyielding rock? Their unfailing, fall-back friend? The one that never got angry, never got upset, always understanding? What was he supposed to be? Perfect?

"And then there's that thing with Dash." Tucker went on. "You can't even be in the same room with him anymore without trying something! And as cool as it is seeing him getting what he deserves… It… it just isn't _you_, Danny."

Danny looked up, frowning, at that.

'_**If anything, they should be**_ _happy__**. If anything, they should be**__ grateful. **H**__**e'll think twice before ever stuffing you in a locker again!'**_

"And it's weird, 'cause it's not like this has happened just one time…" Tucker looked nervous now and wrung his hands. "It's been getting worse… and Danny… when you said you didn't remember what happened with Dash… It didn't make any sense… 'cause Danny, _your eyes didn't change colour_."

Danny froze. Something sparked in his mind and he winced, looking away, rubbing the bridge of his nose. '_**Anger. Yes. He deserved what he got.'**_

"Danny…?" Tucker asked hesitantly, leaning in. "Is something wrong?"

"No." Danny said shortly, still looking away. "I'm fine."

Suddenly Tucker scowled and moved back. "See?" He cried and Danny looked up, blue eyes questioning. "Like that! You did it again! You're shutting us out of your life and we _can't take it anymore_. The secrets, the mood swings: you're happy one minute and snapping our heads off the next!" Tucker stopped and took a few breaths, obviously trying to calm himself down. "Look. Obviously you're going through some stuff and _obviously _you don't want Sam and me involved in it." Danny opened his mouth to object but Tucker raised a hand. "Save it. Look, Danny, we're your _friends_, ok? We want to help you, but we won't just stand around and let you treat us like whipping posts whenever you're upset… Danny…" Tucker's voice softened then. "Look, I _get_ that you might need some time to figure stuff out on your own. Sam doesn't, but she's a girl; she'll come around. So take your time… And when you're ready to talk… You know where to find us." And with that, Tucker turned and walked out.

Danny's eyes glazed as he stared blankly at the place where his friend had been standing. So many things were going through his head all at once. He didn't know what to do. There was guilt: he'd been completely inconsiderate of his friends. There was hurt: why would they leave him like this? Confusion: he didn't know if he really wanted them to leave or not. And helplessness: he had no idea how to deal with everything that was going on, not all on his own.

But what scared him most was that, underneath it all—a molten undercurrent in his mind—was burning rage. How could they just _**abandon **_him like this? They were supposed to be friends. He had _**never**_ just walked away from _**them**_, not when Tucker had been jealous of him, not when Sam practically forgot about them to hang around with some strange boy…

'_Oh but not ME; __**I'm**__ not __**allowed**__ to make mistakes! Not __**allowed**__ to show anything except the invincible __**hero**__! Only happiness, only humbleness… the slightest sight of selfishness, of even __**self-confidence**__ and they call me irresponsible, arrogant…__**egotistical!**__ What about THEM?! Do I turn around and judge THEM?! Why am I always the one who has to apologize? Just for ONCE—'_

A sudden chill caught Danny's attention and he glanced down. With what could only have been described as detached disdain, he gazed down at his ice-encased hands. He wasn't surprised either, when he looked up to see half the floor and a good part of the wall also shining with a glassy layer. At the sink, one single drop of water had frozen halfway before falling. It twinkled at him in the light, like a forlorn star.

'_But this is dangerous'_

'_Dangerous.'_

'_Me.'_

Danny's thoughts finally registered and his blinked, expression flooded his face once more. He looked around again, this time in dismay. Why did he keep losing control like this? His powers… his emotions… his body… Why couldn't it just stop happening? Why wouldn't it just go away like a bad cold?

With a sudden desperate urge, he shook hands hard. The ice on his fingertips shattered and fell, tinkling, toward the ground. Next he tried to undo the damage to the room. But no matter how hard he concentrated, the ice remained, that frozen drop on the tap seemed to mock him now.

"Argh!" Spinning around, Danny slammed the side of his fist into a closed stall. He leaned his forehead on his hand.

'_This is dangerous.'_ He repeated in his head. '_What if I'd lost control while Sam and Tucker were still here? They could have been hurt… or worse…'_

It hadn't become clear to Danny, at least not completely, that his friends could be hurt until after that thing with his future self—Oh, he'd always _known_ that they were the more vulnerable ones during ghost fights_…_ That _they_ were the ones taking the bigger risk by standing up and fighting next to him. But the fact that they could… They… could… _die_… That had not been clear, not until he'd actually seen it happen.

Danny had been different ever since that event. He'd taken his fights more seriously, tried to make Sam and Tucker less involved, stopped playing around as much… Sam and Tucker had noticed… but hadn't really _understood_. They thought he was being overprotective and bossy… But that wasn't _true_… It wasn't.

It had felt like at that moment he had dropped the last shred of childish innocence he had. Staring, _helpless_, at the burning inferno that was once the Nasty Burger as it exploded in a burst of flame and smoke… Everything he had… his family, his friends, his life… Everything was gone, _poof_, just like that, with just an overheated burner and some hot sauce… And he had done _nothing_… Could do _nothing_…

He'd become an old man then, the immortality of childhood seemed an ignorant dream that he'd woken up from, only to land—fall—into the harsh reality that _was life_.

And it was a long fall.

Sam and Tucker wouldn't have understood… How could they? They hadn't seen it happen, hadn't had to live with the pain of watching everyone they ever cared about disappear in a blossoming mushroom of death, hadn't had to live with the knowledge that it was _all their fault._ Not even Jazz—who was smarter than half the adults Danny knew—could understand.

And though it pained Danny that he couldn't discuss these thoughts with anyone, he really did not wish this sort of empathy on any of his friends. Not if he could help it. Especially not just so that he could have someone to _relate_ to. How pathetic.

"I can't… Can't let anything happen to them." Danny muttered to himself. "I won't. Even if it means distancing myself from them." The Hound had reminded him of how fragile Sam and Tucker's lives were. A single mistake, a single shot gone awry… And that could be the end of them. When he'd seen their deaths in the Hound's eyes… for a moment, he'd nearly given up, nearly gone mad himself…

But no, he wouldn't let it happen.

Danny pushed off the stall; his eyes hardened. He wouldn't tell Sam or Tucker about the Hound or about his problems. They would only get involved, get in the middle… And he didn't want them ever meeting that beast… Legion… Never.

And so Danny stayed, standing alone in the very empty washroom, eyes focussed steadily on something only he could see—silent—until the PA system above him crackled, a dispassionate voice grating over the speakers, strangely loud in the small room:

"_Will Daniel Fenton please report to the Principal's office immediately."_

Danny turned, slowly, and walked swiftly out of the room. Eyes trained on the ground, hands deep in his pockets

Ice sparkled in his wake, bidding him goodbye, as no one else could.

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"—Starting fights at school, hitting other people! I don't know what you were _thinking_! _Were_ you thinking?!" Maddie Fenton's angry voice rung through the foyer of the Fenton household as she, Jack and Danny finally arrived home after many long hours of discussion with Mr. Lancer and Casper High's principal. Maddie had been lecturing Danny almost non-stop for he past ten minutes. And she still showed no sign of slowing down.

"No son of mine would ever do that!" Bellowed Jack as he followed his wife into the house, squeezing through the too thin doorframe with his large girth.

Behind them came the small, hunched figure of Danny. Sliding the door shut with a quiet _click_, he took a few deep breaths then followed his parents into the kitchen. He was trying to stay calm, trying to take it all in stride. His parents didn't know the whole story. They wouldn't understand what was going on and it wasn't like they weren't always disappointed in him anyway. So, really, it was nothing new.

_'Nothing new.'_

But it got increasingly more difficult to keep from getting mad as they hadn't stopped telling him off since they'd left the school. The dead silence in the car didn't even count, since his mother kept sending him those guilt-inducing, disappointed looks.

It definitely didn't help that they hadn't even asked for his side of the story. They'd taken for granted, immediately, Dash's convoluted version—backed by countless simpering lackeys—of the events. No one had really cared about what he had to say. No one cared that at least half a dozen other students had had baseball bats. Or that they'd all been _jocks. _Or even that the blood on Dash'sbat had most probably been _Danny's_…

The punishment had been dealt: three days of suspension, out of school, then one week of in class suspension and a month of detention… Danny could hardly believe it when he'd heard. Dash only got a couple of weeks of detention!

_'Of course, your side of the story is hardly any better: 'Oh, I just **happened **to kick Dash hard enough to throw him across the parking lot. Then the bat just **happened** to appearin my hand'? Oh yeah, real great excuse, Fenton.'_ Danny cringed at his thoughts. It was true: there hadn't been much he could've said to his own defence. But even still…

"I just don't understand what's been going on with you recently, you've been getting bad marks, skipping class, and now this?" His mother said.

Oh yeah, Danny sighed, his parents didn't know about his recent rash of good marks, typical.

"Danny what's wrong with you, boy?" He looked up as his father said that. It wasn't the words, but the harsh tone that stung, just a little, before Danny pushed it aside. "Why can't you just be more like your sister—"

And that was it.

"NO! I can't, I just _can't_, ok!? I CAN'T be like Jazz! I'm not perfect, I make mistakes, I'm pathetic at most of my classes. I hate sports… So for just ONCE, stop comparing me to Jazz all the time! Look, I'm sorry, ok!? I'm SORRY if I'm not the PERFECT son you've always wanted. Well, whatever, I guess it doesn't _matter_, right? Since you've got _Jazz_—"

"DANIEL FENTON! YOU STOP TAKING THAT TONE WITH US RIGHT NOW AND SIT BACK DOWN IN YOUR CHAIR!" Danny jumped at the volume of his mother's voice. He'd never heard her get this angry and he couldn't stop the chill of fear that raced over him, causing his fingertips to tingle. At some point during his rant he'd jumped to his feet and now he quickly fell back into his chair at the table.

"Now first." Maddie took a deep breath. "You do NOT talk to me or your father like that. You will _not_ be disrespectful us like that. You are the one who's done something wrong here, not us. And we will not stand for any of your attitude. We've already let enough of it pass and we aren't going to do that anymore. You've been suspended from school, but now you're grounded. No phone, no computer, no TV, no going out. You will take the time to study and if you have free time you will spend it doing chores around the house, you've been shirking enough of them lately."

Danny's mouth opened slightly as he heard this. What? The phone and TV thing he could deal with… after all, he was trying to make space between him and Sam and Tucker… but what did she mean by shirking his chores?

'_Ex__cuse__ me? But I always cooking dinner!__ Like you'd know, you're either in the lab downstairs or out hunting ghosts ALL THE TIME! AND I have to keep cleaning up after Dad—the lab, the table, whatever he messes up he has me fix—__**And**__, if I don't have time to do every-single-one of my chores, then it's because I was OUT FIGHTING GHOSTS… Well, __**excuse me**__ for putting the __**safety of the world**__ over __**taking out the trash!**'_

'_I take out ghost trash.'_ His mind quipped feebly and he sucked in one of his cheeks.

But he could tell when his Mom was serious. And he had a feeling there was no going back on this one. Dejected, he emptied his mind of righteous retorts and hung his head.

"Yes, Mom." He mumbled

"Good, now go to your room, Danny." Jack pointed out the door and Danny was only too willing to comply, ducking out the door and practically fleeing to his room. Unfortunately, he couldn't help but catch the last few words his parents said before he was out of earshot:

"Jack, why did you send him off? We have to talk to him, get him to tell us what's wrong; if he's having problems then we have to help him."

"Maddie, he's just acting out, asking for attention. Just leave him and he'll go back to normal."

"But what if it's more serious… Like…"

"Maddie, teenagers do stupid things all the time. It's nothing important. He'll learn; we can't keep holding his hand all his life. He has to grow up at some point."

"I guess…"

"Great! Then it's settled. Now where did you put the fudge?"

"I suppose you're right, dear. It's in the back, near the ham."

Danny brushed at his stinging eyes angrily as he ascended the stares. Maybe he _did _want them to care a little more, to be a bit more concerned… What kind of parents didn't notice that their son was half-ghost?

Just hearing them brush off his problems like they were nothing sent a needle of pain straight into his heart that had nothing to do with his shoulder.

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"Danny, Danny, are you okay in there?"

The raven-haired teen groaned into his pillow at Jazz's voice.

"Go away, Jazz." He mumbled through the fabric.

"Not until I find out if you're okay. I heard Mom and Dad yelling at you downstairs…"

Danny groaned, louder this time. He knew Jazz had heard. He just hadn't wanted her to _say_ that. "Just go away…" he said again.

"No." She answered flatly. "I'm coming in."

Danny made a noise of frustration, pulling himself up into a sitting position and glaring as Jazz as she eased the door open.

"Jeez, Danny, it's pitch black in here!" She cried.

"I can see just fine." He said dryly, letting his eyes spark green for a moment.

"R-right." She answered, as though uncertain of how to respond to that. "Well, I can't see a thing, so I'm turning on the light."

She flicked the switch and the lights blinked on. Danny frowned, squinting and bringing a hand to his eyes as they protested.

"Danny, you can't just mope in bed like this!" She said once she noticed how the blankets pooled around his waist and how he was still in his school clothes. Danny scowled.

"I can do what I like, Jazz. It's not like Mom or Dad care."

"You know that's not true." Jazz admonished.

"Yes it is!" He shot back. "All they care about are their stupid inventions, their stupid ghost-hunting, and you! Their perfect child. You've got everything, after that, what's the point in me even trying?"

"Danny—"

"Just go AWAY JAZZ!" He yelled without warning and she took an involuntary step back, eyes widening. On a table near her, she saw a small model plane suddenly freeze over before cracking in half. She gasped.

Just then, she saw something flicker across Danny's expression, a small twitching of his eyebrow, or the light moving across his icy blue eyes; then, all at once, his expression changed. He looked at her then the broken plane and his eyes showed sudden horrification at what he'd just done. Instantly, Jazz relaxed. This was the brother she knew.

"Jazz… I-I I-'m so sorry… You should go." He said quickly and she opened her mouth to protest but he beat her to it. "No, you have to go. You're not… It's not…your fault for anything that's going on right now and I… I don't want…to take out my problems on you. Please, if you stay I might loose it again. Just go, ok? Please… just go." Jazz noticed how his voice hitched at the end of his sentence and a sudden rush of concern for her younger brother rushed over her. Not caring if he got angry—he would never, _ever_ hurt her, of this she was certain—she rushed up to him and swept him up in a tight hug.

"Jazz!" Danny gasped in shock.

"I know you didn't do it on purpose." She soothed. "I know you'd never attack Dash without reason and I know you must have had a very good reason for punching him. It's not your fault, ok? You didn't reveal any secrets and frankly that vainglorious bully had it coming. Compared to what you _could_ have done to him, he got off easy. I don't think for a moment that you should have been suspended. I can't stop them from punishing you, but you listen to me: I know I'm not the best ghost hunter in the world…" Danny gave a half-hearted snort at this, muttering a quiet 'understatement of the century' under his breath. But Jazz took this as a good sign, her brother was still himself, hurt, scared, but _he _was still there, and that was what mattered. He would heal. She would help him.

"_If_ you need any help with catching up on stuff" she persisted. "Homework, or assignments, anything at all, just ask me and I'll be glad to help." She looked down at him with a smile, watching fondly as her brother's face took on an interesting range of emotions: moving from confusion, to understanding, to shock and then settling on gratefulness. It was quite an expression. She filed it away, a mental Kodak moment.

"I'll always be around for you, little brother." She grinned, then ruffled his hair. With a squawk, he jerked away, swatting at her hand. It was the most normal he'd acted in weeks. "And no matter what anyone says, you'll always be important to me. You're my hero, after all." And leaning down, she placed a soft kiss on his temple. Shockingly, Danny didn't not pull back. He just stared at her.

His expression was fathomless. Jazz wondered just what is was that he saw.

How did the world look from her little brother's eyes?

"Ok Danny, I'll go now." And she stood. "Just remember, sleeping all day isn't going to make your problems go away, ok? And I'm always right here, next door, if you need to talk." She made it to the door before his quiet voice called her back.

"Jazz?" He intoned and she turned back in curiosity.

"Yeah?" She asked.

Danny gave a small smile. "Thanks."

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But in spite of everything Jazz said, Danny still felt himself burning with indignation as he tossed and turned in his bed that night.

"I wish…" He muttered. "Just once, just _for once_, Dash would get what was coming to him. And that he would _feel_ it… Something he'd never be able to run away from…"

Slowly, Danny's eyes slid shut as he fell into slumber.

In the corner of his room, something flashed—an intense, sickly yellow spark of light—came and went, almost like an illusion.

Or like a pair of eyes, blinking in the night.

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_To Be Continued…_

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Oh wow… this chapter was unnaturally hard to write. I'm not sure why I had such a hard time with it, but if it didn't seem to flow exactly right then that's probably 'cause I took a week-long break in the middle of writing the chapter: just left it completely for a week before coming back… Oh well, It served its purpose, and I guess that's what matters. XP Regardless, I hope you guys liked it! Longest one yet!

**MutantLover09:** XD Lol, yeah, I've been dodging the metaphorical boulders up to now… But for some reason they've disappeared and it's making me nervous… maybe they've gone to find reinforcements?? Uh oh… (_sees floating green boulders coming over the hills…_) Darn it! Now where did I put my Fenton Anti-Creep Stick?! XP… But ignoring my impending doom of course, I was actually wondering myself if the last chapter was a little extreme. I know that in the show Dash would shove Danny around and toss him into lockers (which IS actually very violent… if you consider how small those lockers were!) but he never actually got a group of people together to beat someone like _that_… I guess the way I reasoned it was with mob mentality. A group of dumb jocks is dumber than just one dumb jock (did that even make sense:3). So a group of them got together to chase Danny down and push him around… Then one kid grabbed a bat and then everyone did it… without really thinking about it… I don't think Dash _intended _on using the bat… It just happened… an _accident_, however horrible that sounds… But still feel free to take Dash anytime you want and don't worry about roughing him up some, I won't be needing him anytime soon (_holds out a cowering Dash_) There you go! Give him some for me too, will ya? XP

**Nylah:** YES! I love poking around Danny's head. I doubt we'll ever be on speaking terms again after this story but I'm definitely enjoying picking his brain while I can (_Danny has a murderous look on his face_) Aww… He's too nice though, he'll get over it! (_Danny sighs, exasperated_). Hope you liked the chapter! Internal conflict galore, oie!

**Wishes for Wings:** Well, I can't really say if you're right or not (sorry! It would ruin my plot! XD) But I CAN say that it's kinda complicated… and um… Ok, I can't really say anything more… (_sheepish grin_)… But yeah, I hope the fight wasn't too much! I blame Dash's actions on mob mentality (he himself would have never hit Danny with a bat… but when backed by his friends…). Though of course , he was still stupid enough to insult Danny so in a way he asked for it… You know, I always did think that Mr. Lancer cared about his students, even the non-jocks… and I like little Lancer-Danny interaction scenes, so there'll will probably be a few more in this fic. Oh and you lost your ID?! That's terrible! I did that with my student ID and it was such a pain to get a new one! I hope you found yours!

**sciencefreak330:** Yes! I had fun writing that fight scene, but now I wonder how you had imagined it (maybe more sneaky/ghost related, without Danny loosing control or getting into trouble? XP). Anyway, what did you think about this chapter? More Danny angst (yeahhh, I'm evil, making him go through so many problems all at the same time! XD)

**Thunderstorm101: **Heya! I know what you mean about leaving little clues around for readers to pick up. I love doing it, but it makes my fic too long! It's crazy… but I'm really glad you liked the last chapter. It was a little difficult to write… mainly Danny's emotional response. I wanted to make it big, but still realistic, which is why I'm very glad that you found it believable. Your description, by the way was very true. I often find it hard to express such strong emotions in writing but you did it very well. I have felt that kind of rage (though yours was probably stronger) but I've never been that angry around someone else, so the reaction was mostly my extrapolation on Danny's character. So I'm glad you liked it and I'll keep your words in mind (you might just see them in a chapter someday! After all, who knows when a character is going to go 'flying into a berserk mode so far beyond rage that they feel numb'? Hmmmm). Thanks though, for sharing that insight with me.

**Sasia93:** HI! Oh my goodness, I can't believe you're reading this story! Can I just say that I absolutely loved your story 'Pen Pals' and for you to say that you like my fic is a HUGE compliment! And you're gonna recommend it?! YAY!! (_proceeds to jump about the room like a lunatic_)...(_pause_)…ehe he… Ok, I think my moment of rabid obsessive fan-ness is over, you can come out of hiding now! XD So…_Really?_ The name of my fic reminded you of 'Soul Shredder'?? Wow… I had no idea that was the connotation I was conveying!... Actually, I never thought about it like that at all, the word 'Sepulcher' really means 'Reliquary' so it doesn't actually have anything with shredder… but… _Really?_... Hmmmm, that really gives me something to think about, I guess! XP… Anyway. I'm glad you like the story so far! Cliffhangers might not happen too often (I think!) so that might help cruel irony lay down her hot poker (of DOOM, naturally!). Oh and I think Danny's _definitely _feeling the guilt for beating up Dash… I agree, poor guy, he has NO idea what I'm gonna put him through XD…Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter! And thanks for reviewing!

**Adio!**

**Sholay**


	9. Suspended

**Chapter 9 Yay! It's Leap Day! Happy Leap Day everyone! I won't get the chance to update on a February 29th for another four years! That's so crazy! XD**

**Disclaimer:** T'ain't mine.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 9—**__Suspended_

_Danny awoke in a dark place._

_Scrambling to his feet, he threw his arms out, pushing away at the air. It was a defensive mechanism, one deeply ingrained in him after so many hours of ghost fighting._

_But there was nothing._

_Nothing in front of him, nothing behind him and nothing on the sides. Danny spun in a slow circle, sweeping his hands through the air. His eyes—useless—were blind in the boundless dark, though he continued to blink owlishly at nothing, hoping, for a shred of light to appear, to guide him._

_When he still felt nothing, he paused: thinking of what best to do next. Deciding, he swept his right foot out in a half circle before him. He felt his shoes grind roughly over a gravelly ground—or was it cement?—But he heard nothing. It disturbed him and with sudden dread he raised his right hand next to his ear, and snapped his fingers._

_Silence, whole and profound, filled his head._

_His heart clenched and a thrill of fear blossomed in his chest as he snapped again, harder, then stomped his feet, clapped his hands._

_Silence, silence and silence deafened him._

"_I can't hear! I can't see!" He cried, then gasped and clapped both hands to his throat when no sound escaped. "I can't hear." He said again, an edge of hysteria in his soundless voice. "I can't…" but this time, he'd placed a hand to his mouth as he'd spoken. He froze in surprise as he felt a rush of air move over his fingers. Somehow, this feeling, no matter how slight, anchored him, brought him back to the world. Confirmed his existence. He said a few more things, mindless words, meaningless sounds, only to feel his breath on his hand. He was blind, he was deaf, but he could still speak, still move, still feel._

_Still survive._

_Holding fiercely onto this small fact, Danny hardened his expression and threw everything else from his mind. He was breathing. That meant he was still alive. As long as he was alive he could get through anything, survive anything. He had to. If he died who would protect Tucker and Sam, or Valerie or Jazz, or his Mom and Dad…_

_It was a silly pep talk: his 'hero complex' acting up, as Sam would have put it, but it worked. His mind was clear._

_He swept another foot out before taking a step forward. Having gained back his determination, he moved faster now, more confidently._

_Danny did not know for how long he stumbled through the dark. Every step he took was cautious and his hands mapped a constant perimeter around his body. He kept his mind clean and optimistic, thinking fondly of how Sam and Tucker and him would laugh about this later. Honestly, he was a half-ghost, almost-fifteen-year-old who fought evil spirits on a daily basis. And he was afraid of a little dark? How silly was that?_

_Distracted, Danny had neglected to sweep the area before his last two steps and quite suddenly his foot snagged on something hard and unrelenting. Caught off-guard, Danny flailed, letting out a soundless cry as he fell through the darkness. His hands caught him though—smacking hard against the ground—and Danny wasted no time in scampering backward on all fours from whatever-it-was that had tripped him, his eyes trying in vain to see his invisible attacker in the dark._

_He waited. Seconds? Minutes? Danny had no concept of time._

_All was silent._

_When still nothing had happened, Danny decided to lean in for a closer look. Curiosity prickled like needles on his mind. He swept his right hand over the ground in front of him. Feeling nothing but hard rock he went further, trying, as best he could, to retrace the panicked steps he'd taken before. Moving onto his hands and knees, Danny crawled forward, searching in wide arcs until finally his knuckles hit something unrelenting._

_He traced the object, creating a mental picture as best he could. And when he'd finished, he paused._

_That couldn't be right._

_Could it?_

_It was a handle._

'_On the ground?' Danny thought to himself. Something nagged at him. There was something fundamentally wrong with having a door on the ground. But a second, louder voice was telling him it didn't matter. Who cared where the door was? As long as it took him out of this place._

_Danny tended to agree with the second voice, if only because it presented a nicer outcome._

_So he reached out, grasped the handle firmly, and yanked._

_A door flew open, eagerly, so fast it nearly threw Danny backward._

_And then he drowned._

_Sound, foreign and intense, filled him. Light, glowing and intense, poured generously from the deep. Senses overwhelmed, he fell back from the door in shock, throwing his hands up to shield his ears, and squeezing his eyes shut._

_For a moment, Danny could do nothing but sit there dazed, his eyes closed._

_Then he realized he could hear._

_Then he realized he could see._

_Leaping forward, a shocked yelp stuck in his throat, he curled his fingers around the edge of the hole and leaned in._

_Sound, low and bubbling, bled from the doorway in the ground, echoing deeply, as though from a huge cavern._

_He opened his eyes_

_The relief he felt could not be described in words as the gift of sight was bestowed anew on him. Above and around the threshold was still dark nothingness, but past the threshold was a new world._

_He had been right; the sound **was **coming from a cavern. The hole in the ground opened up to a rocky cave that yawned endlessly into the earth. The stones lining the walls were uncut and jagged, dark crimson light moved in a hypnotic dance flickered up the rocks, creeping up the crevasses in the stone before falling back and trying again. The light came from below Danny's vision, so he leaned closer, right over the hole, to get a closer look._

_Danny sucked in a sharp breath._

_And he heard himself._

_The cavern was very deep, yes, but not endless as he'd first thought. Far, far down into the ground, he could spot the bottom of the cave._

_Lava._

_There was rock too, in fact, that was what covered most of the ground, but there was no mistaking the thin, softly glowing threads of molten rock that wound and cut their way through the stone. Rumbles from the deep vibrated up the rocks toward him. It was like some massive volcano. _

_Danny wondered then if he'd be making a mistake by jumping into this strange place. What if he got trapped? What if he couldn't go back?_

_Then he looked up and around himself. The darkness around him seemed infinitely darker and he didn't think he could stand being lost in nothing again. Danny looked down, into the lava pit and felt a wash of comforting warmth luring him downward. And yet still he hesitated. He looked back up._

_But when he uttered a questioning sound to the darkness and felt only the vibrations in his throat, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, he knew without a doubt what he would do._

_He jumped._

_As Danny fell he felt the soothing heat from below rush over his face, brushing his hair back off his face and neck. The light from beneath him encased him in a comforting crimson glow and Danny watched as the light sparked and played across the rocks around him._

_The fall was long, but he wasn't afraid, all his fears from before seemed far away and inconsequential now. He felt remarkably light, without a care in the world as he plummeted ever downward. Freedom was what he felt and Danny let out a short laugh of amazement, and another one of delight when he heard the first._

_His feet landed softly on the ground, like a huge, invisible hand had gently laid him down. And as his feet touched on the dark rock, Danny looked up and around._

_From this point of view, the cavern was so immense he couldn't even see the hole through which he'd jumped, which suited Danny just fine. Heat rose up from the ground in long, heavy breaths and the air rippled, pulsing around him._

_The warm red glow from the rivers of lava—much bigger than threads, he saw now—engulfed his small frame and for a moment Danny relaxed, throwing his head back and enjoying the feeling of completeness that he felt as warmth played pleasantly across his skin._

_Then the cave rumbled._

_Danny started, his eyes shooting open, when the ground shook and the rumbling grew even louder. He had to steady his stance, holding his arms out as balance, and as he did a nearby pool of lava hissed and spluttered loudly. Suddenly the lava bulged._

_An infectious pustule, the bubble of lava bubbled before breaking and overflowing. Danny yelped and hopped backward to avoid the seething liquid as it reached for him. Eventually it receded, but Danny did not notice how close he had gotten to another fiery pool. The lava behind him gave a shuddering roll before sucking in and exploding outward, spitting drops of fire and molten rock into the air. Shocked, he spun around, but didn't have time to move out of the way as the lava landed on his shoulder._

_For a second, Danny's world went white as pain consumed him._

_Then it was gone._

_He stumbled, barely avoided another spatter of lava and looked down at his chest, raising his hands palm up as though to claw at something._

_Danny gasped._

_This was no lava. Lava did not do **this.**_

_What had previously been a bright, glowing drop of fire and rock now looked dull and dark. The lava had boiled before it had hit him, but it should have stopped. Instead, this thing seemed to be writhing and bubbling even more than before. Somehow it had moved from his to shoulder to a spot on his chest._

_The thing turned darker. Now it was nearly black._

_Suddenly the pain returned and Danny stifled a scream as he felt a burning, sharp feeling on his left side of his chest, right over his heart. Then he looked down and saw, and understood._

_He paled._

_This thing was trying to… trying to… enter him!_

_With a sudden burst of horrified fearlessness, he reached up and clawed at the thing. It hissed and spluttered, burning his hand, and an answering growl sounded from the cavern around him. Danny has to skip and hop to avoid another shower of lava. But he did not forget the thing on his chest and, before it could resume its attack, Danny grasped the entire thing in his hand, ignoring the pain, and how the thing was slimy to the touch, and threw it as far away from him as possible._

_A high pitched squeal nearly shattered Danny's eardrums and he answered with a yell of his own, cringing and clapping his hands over his ears._

_The next rumble shook the entire cavern hard and Danny nearly fell to the ground. Steadying himself, his attention was drawn momentarily to the ground and he saw, with mounting horror, how the ground was cracking beneath his feet. Thick gouges formed at his feet then angled away in all directions like a spiderweb. Danny was struck senseless for a moment as he watched the cracks dig deep into the ground, then fill and swell with bubbling, deadly lava._

_A low rumble shook the cave, lilted, as though the foul place was laughing at him._

_The lava surged._

_And then Danny moved._

_He did it without thinking, a split second reflex that made him jump to the side, leap into the air…_

…_A__nd stay there._

_Danny would have stopped to wonder when exactly he'd remembered that he could fly… Or rather, when he'd **forgotten **he could fly, but he wasn't given the chance._

_The ground below abruptly burst into flames and Danny, floating stagnantly, stared uneasily at the spot where he'd been standing only a few seconds ago… now a pit of fire._

_A rush of air blew his hair back from his face, but what he'd felt before as comforting and warm was now stifling, blistering heat. The flames spread like a blanket, covering every inch of the rocky ground. But they were not sated. In sharp bursts, they exploded upward in sparks and Danny soon found himself desperately dodging and weaving around madly to avoid the flames._

"_Oie!" He called suddenly as a spurt of fire passed alarmingly close to his face. "Stop with the fireworks already! I happen to like my hair the way it is, thank you very much!"_

_The fire didn't seem to take too kindly to his sarcasm and grew higher._

_Danny fell back with a scowl. He looked all around for any sign of escape but there was none. He could no longer see the hole through which he'd come and fire was surrounding him on all sides. He noticed his breathing getting heavier and forced himself to calm down, closing his eyes. There had to be a way to beat the fire, to stop it, there had to—_

_That was it!_

_Danny's eyes shot open, just in time to see a large burst of flame heading right toward him. His eyes widened fractionally, but then narrowed. He grit his teeth, reached inside of himself, concentrated… and **pushed**._

_There was a screech and a hiss, and the sound of chiming. Then the cavern filled with smoke._

_Danny, looked up, grimaced._

"_I've always said…"_

_The fire was there, inches away from his face, reaching for him with jagged flames._

"_If you can't stand the heat…"_

_And a thick layer of ice, glimmering and chiming softly in resonance with the cavern, encased the fire in an eternal embrace._

"_Get popsicles!" And he grinned. He'd stopped the fire just in time. Fully intending to let out a whoop of happiness, he took a deep breath._

_And gagged._

_What was that disgusting smell? Danny wrinkled his nose and looked around at the thick mist in the surrounding air. The mist, or smoke as he saw now, hung heavy in the air, gathering around him in a soft whirlwind. He sniffed the air experimentally and nearly gagged again. It smelled acrid and goatish, almost like some kind of a metal, yet not. It was thick and gritty and the taste of the smell stuck in his throat and stung his eyes. He squinted. What was it?_

_He flew up as far as the cavern would allow, but could not escape the smell._

_It was overpowering, it made him nauseated and dizzy, feelings that only got worse as the mist thickened into smog._

_With all this smoke and fire it was like Hell had just opened up and swallowed him…_

…_Hell…?_

_Something clicked in his mind._

_He remembered then, the stories his mother used to tell him of religion, of the passing of souls that did not cling to life… of good and evil. Heaven and hell. Of Fire and brimstone which marked the passing of the devil._

…_Brimstone…_

_When he was small, he had asked his mother, innocently curious as all toddlers are, what Brimstone smelled like._

_His mother had paused, then told him it would be a mix of the worst things he'd ever smelled._

_He'd pictured his aunt's old goats… and the sulfur his parents kept in the lab…_

_Just like this. Just like now._

_**This**_ _was how he had imagined Brimstone would smell._

_And then the world seemed to twist, jerk and wrench out of his grasp. Danny's cry caught in his throat as he found himself suddenly horizontal on the ground. He shot to his feet instantly and looked around wildly._

_The fire was gone. The cavern vanished. There was a slight sulfuric aftertaste on his tongue, but other than that, one would have never been able to guess he'd been in a lava pit only moments before…_

_He was on a street. An ordinary, regular, normal street. In fact, he knew this street; this was where the Nasty Burger was. He, Sam and Tucker walked by here everyday. Danny intuitively looked up to the sky, but it gave no indication of the time of day, stuck in that strange twilight that occurred at nightfall as well as sunrise._

_A sharp shiver ran over Danny's body, chilling him just enough for him to let out a puff of visible air. The misty exhale didn't dissipate immediately though and Danny clearly saw, between his shivers, the crystal blue sheen of the vapour._

_His posture immediately shifted: stance widening, and hands coming up in protective fists. He searched the area with his eyes for the ghost._

_Danny had expected an attack, yes, an ectoblast or a tackle…_

…_But what he had not been expecting was the telltale whirring of a ghost hunting weapon firing up. He only just managed to jump aside before the area where he'd been standing was turned into a scorched crater._

"_Ghost! I have you now!"_

"_Valerie?" Danny's mouth fell open, then quickly shut as he dove out of the way of another blast._

"_Don't you call me that, ghost! It's Red Hunter to you! Now, stand still so I can blast you into the afterlife!" Valerie hovered above him on her jet board, decked out in full ghost hunting gear complete with shiny black and red armor, fitted with a helmet and visor… and one very large, smoking gun attached to her arm._

"_Uh…" Danny knew he shouldn't, he really knew he shouldn't, but he could help it. He floated up next to the ghost hunter and cocked his head, a small smirk on his lips. "Technically, y'know, I'm already—"_

_He ducked to avoid losing his head._

"_GET BACK HERE!"_

_The battle was intense, as all battles with Valerie were. He used his ghostly advantage to zip around and through buildings, but she guided her jet sled so smoothly she may as well have been intangible as well. With those new upgrades, the gun and the suit, she was probably more dangerous than half the ghosts in the ghost zone. It didn't help that her aim was still pinpoint-perfect._

_Danny's legs were a spectral blur as he zigzagged through the air, doing tight loop-de-loops and nose dives to avoid Valerie's fire. He tried passing through the ground intangibly and disappearing into nothing, but her sensors were flawless. No sooner had he appeared above ground was she inches away, charging her massive gun. She never fell behind. And her weapon was an ecto-energy seeker. He hated those._

_After a few minutes of nothing but dodging, Danny realized he would have to do something. Without warning, he took a sharp U-turn and headed straight for Valerie. She didn't have the time to react as his hand came up and snapped out in attack._

_Ice formed around her new toy, spreading and covering the gun so quickly she hurriedly detached the weapon and tossed it, for fear that the ice would spread to her arm. Danny would never have let that happen; nonetheless, Valerie had reacted exactly as he'd wanted. Without her little toy, Danny would probably be able to escape before she gathered herself enough for—_

_Danny's thoughts were cut off abruptly as a sharp, stinging pain blossomed on his arm. He gasped and jerked back, clutching the wound and staring incredulously up at a smirking Valerie._

"_Never." She said, putting one long, metal covered boot on the head of her board and bringing the back of her hand up, brandishing the five sharp needles protruding from her fist. "Underestimate me. Got that, punk?"And before Danny knew what was happening, she'd taken a sharp dive, streaking toward him at a frightening pace, throwing needles ready between her nimble fingers._

_Danny yelped and jumped to the side, then practically dropped out of the air to avoid the needles she'd flung at his retreating form. Unfortunately, he'd miscalculated the space of his jump and Danny felt his lower back collide hard with the side of a dumpster. Thrown off balance, he toppled backward over the metal top of the canister, rolled over the side and just missed cracking his skull open on the ground as he fell hard._

_Danny groaned, rolling to the side and pressing the heel of one hand to his temple as he tried to remember how to stand._

_Then there came an ominous click and with cold dread, Danny looked up, slowly, straight into the barrel of a gun._

_Valerie sneered._

"_Got you."_

_And the world went dark._

_When Danny looked up again, he saw he was in the bright halls of Casper High. For a second, this struck him as odd… hadn't he just been somewhere else just a second ago? But Danny's head felt fuzzy and slow, like it was stuffed with cotton and he couldn't hold on to the thought long enough for it to properly register. Eventually, he stopped bothering and instead focused his attention on his surroundings._

_People bustled back and forth, some squeezing by him, some outright elbowing him out of their way. The sound of lockers squeaking on their hinges and people gossiping loudly around him created a noisy buzzing all around. Danny didn't move, just looked around with some confusion. Did he have class? Wasn't he suspended? Or grounded? Where were Sam and Tucker? And Jazz? Or Valerie?_

_Danny blinked. The crowd in the hall seemed to be thinning, it seemed like everyone was going to their classes. But Danny felt no immediate sense of urgency—that, and he still didn't remember if he had class or not—so he stayed where he was._

_When the halls had completely emptied, Danny took his first step forward. Tentatively, he walked to the end of the corner, scouring the lockers and paper strewn floors with his eyes as he went. Something felt distinctly out of place here…_

"_Hey, fellas, look! Nerd alert!"_

_Danny cringed as his head jerked up as the obnoxious voice hit his ears. He half-expected to see some large jock towering over him, but was momentarily confused when he saw no one._

"_Hey! Dip-wad, yer late for class!" There came the sound of raucous laughter and Danny realized that the voices were coming from around the corner. Walking forward, he peered around the corner._

_Dash Baxter, backed by three burly jocks, was jeering at a smaller, scrawnier boy—who Danny recognized as Nathan from third period History class. They were laughing uproariously as though sharing some unspoken joke. Between their bulky frames, Danny saw Nathan cowering around his books. The smaller boy was sending brief, furtive looks at the circle of jocks, as though searching for a way out._

"_Hey, why aren't you laughing, nerd? Don't you appreciate a good joke? You don't think Dash's joke was funny?" Kwan leaned in toward Nathan, who cringed away. The threat was quiet, but clear._

_Nathan hesitated, then let out a weak laugh. "Ha… ha… yeah… right… funny… good one, uh, Dash…"_

"_Hey! Are you talking to __**us**__?" Dash suddenly stopped laughing and his two lackeys grew serious. "Hey, nerd-turd, you talking to us? You think you're good enough to talk to __**us**__?" The blond sneered. And Kwan and the other jock jeered at Dash's cunning._

"_Nerd-turd!"_

"_Ha, ha, good one, Dash!"_

_The only one not sharing the joke, Nathan, slowly widened his eyes as he began to realize the trap he'd walked into._

"_Hey, nerd-turd, ya think yer good enough to talk to us, hm?" Dash smirked. "Want some gum?"_

"_W-what?" Nathan blinked, stupefied, then blinked again when Dash pulled out a pack of gum and popped a few pieces out, handing them to Kwan and the other dark-haired jock at his side._

"_Yeah, gum." Dash held the packet up and waved it back and forth in front of Nathan's eyes. "Am I speaking too fast for you? G-u-m."_

_Nathan looked unsure, but eventually gave a slow nod, his fuzzy orange curls bobbing. "O-okay." Nervously, he held out his hand._

"_Here." With a smirk, Dash held out a piece, and purposely missed Nathan's hand, dropping the gum onto the floor. "Oh, whoops. Quick nerd-turd! Five second rule!"_

"_Five second rule?" Nathan was befuddled. The other jocks laughed._

"_Yeah, don't you know anything? It's good for five seconds! So hurry up! Pick it up!"_

"_I-I-" Nathan hesitated. The other jocks joined in._

"_Pick it up!"_

"_Hurry up!"_

"_C'mon! Pick it up!" Nathan fidgeted, clearly not wanting to, but the boys didn't stop._

"_Pick it up!"_

"_Pick it up!"_

"_Pick it up! Now!"_

_Finally, unable to handle the pressure of having three jocks yelling in his face, Nathan yielded, and bent to pick up the piece of gum on the ground. In a flash, Dash nodded to Kwan, who eagerly reached out and gave the small boy a vicious wedgie._

_Nathan gasped, stumbled and fell, dropping all his books on the ground amidst loud laughter._

"_Aww…poor nerd-turd, dropped all his books. Here, lemme help you." With a sadistic grin, Dash wound back and kicked Nathan's books across the hall. Pages scattered as the books skittered over the tiles, overturning into dirty puddles tracked in from the outside by wet feet._

_Nathan let out a cry of dismay, but didn't reach for his books. Instead, he twisted backward. Pushing off the ground with his hand, he lurched to his feet—one last desperate attempt to run. But the dark-haired jock caught him by his vest, spinning his small frame around and slamming him into the lockers. Nathan winced as the hard metal handles dug into his back._

"_Hey, nerd." Dash made no pretenses at being nice anymore and he leaned into Nathan, a cruel smirk on his lips. The boy flinched, glasses askew on his face as he trembled openly. "Eat it." And the jock sent a significant look at the soiled piece of gum in Nathan's hand._

_Nathan froze. "B-but…"_

"_EAT IT!" Dash slammed his palm into the lockers by Nathan's head._

_Nathan recoiled, and smacked his head hard against the lockers. Closing his eyes in submission, cheeks flushed with humiliation, he raised the dirty gum to his mouth._

_Anger, gradually rising like a bird within Danny's chest, finally reached a breaking point._

_What was the point of being brave if all he could do was hide?_

_Of being so strong if he was so weak?_

_Of being half-human if all he did was fight ghosts?_

_And Danny lunged, throwing away every barrier, every restriction he had placed on himself, and his powers, for the sole intention of causing harm—to a human—to Dash._

_But as he was airborne, the world stopped and darkened around him._

_When Danny landed, he was in an entirely different room_

_Danny paused, looking around in confusion. The room was dark, but on the walls he could make out posters of football stars, there was a shelf, crammed with glimmering awards, a table, overflowing with crumpled papers… and a closet, open, through which Danny could just glimpse the beginning of a large mound of teddy bears._

'_Dash's room…?' Danny frowned. 'Why… How am I-…?'_

_A gust of air blew past him and Danny shifted as he felt the cold draft ruffle his hair. He looked toward the source of the wind, an open window—dark draperies fluttering in the moving air— and in doing so, his eyes fell on the sleeping figure on the bed underneath it._

'_Dash…' Danny stepped forward until he was standing over the jock and looked down. Dash's large, barrel chest rose and fell softly beneath the sheets as he breathed and the moonlight streaming in through the window highlighted his pale features. Asleep._

_In this light, Dash looked nothing like the strong, indomitable bully he was at school. He looked… just like any other human… fragile, vulnerable… Weak._

_It was then that Danny realized the slight weight in his right hand. Looking down curiously, raised the object until he could make out its contours in the moonlight._

_There was a flash of silver and Danny gasped, dropping the object which fell with a muffled thud onto the carpeted floor._

_Light played across a metal surface, simmering dully on hard wood and flickering dangerously off the tapered edge of a long butcher's knife._

_Danny took a few stuttering steps backward, his mind uncomprehending, staring widely._

_A knife._

_A knife in his hand._

_A knife in his hand with him standing over Dash's bed._

_What was going on?_

_Why was he standing over Dash's bed in the middle of the night? Why was he standing there with a knife in his hand? Was he—? Would he—?_

_Danny looked again at the pale body on the bed. Soft breaths, in, out, in, out… how little in would take… to cease those vital puffs of air… To stop that beating heart, to snuff out the light in fear-stricken eyes… forever._

'_NO!' Danny stumbled backward, falling over a box—or a chair, or something—but kept scrambling back on his hands and feet. 'No… I would never… never… never even __**think**__ of…' He squeezed his eyes shut in denial._

_When he looked up again, the bed, the shelf of awards, the table and the closet, had all disappeared. No longer was he in the bedroom of the most popular jock in school holding a kitchen knife. Instead, he was back in the middle of the street. Slowly, Danny pulled himself to his feet, looking around apprehensively. Streetlights shone eerie vermillion beams through the darkness, landing in perfect circles, illuminating the road below. Above, the starless sky was swathed in deep red, a reflection from the lights below._

_Danny walked down the road, looking around. The streetlights seemed to stretch forever and mentally he wondered whether he was just going to follow these lights indefinitely or turn into one of the smaller alleys to the side. Danny took a moment then, to look down into the dark abyss that lead into a side alley. The pure darkness disturbed him so deeply that his mind immediately recoiled from that thought and he continued down the copper lit street._

_At some point, Danny started to get that paranoid, itchy feeling that someone was following him. He looked back, but no one was there, and when he looked forward he hastened his steps._

_Then, a gust of icy air blew over his back, the hairs on the back on his neck standing up._

_This time, when Danny turned around there was significantly more dread in his movements._

_The streetlights at the end of the road had died and in the darkness, Danny could make out a pair of glowing yellow eyes. Jaundiced eyes._

_The eyes grew closer and every time they passed a light it died, flicking out into darkness, there were no dramatic explosions or high pitched squealing. The lights just… went out._

_Danny stepped back; some buried alive instinct blaring warning bells in his head. He couldn't face this thing. It was too strong… too strong…!_

_The eyes grew closer._

_Danny turned and ran._

_The eyes pursued him soundlessly, relentlessly, with only the growing darkness heralding his presence. Danny's heart was in his throat, blood rushing to his head pounding out their own deadly symphony in his ears. The light just behind Danny flickered out. He sped up._

_After awhile, Danny noticed that the darkness seemed to be receding, light becoming more prominent around him. Chancing a look backward, Danny saw that the last few lights behind him were still on. He slowed and frowned, his steps stumbled to a halt. Where were the eyes?_

_Then a shadow fell over him._

_Danny's breath hitched. And slowly, he turned._

_Glowing eyes of sickly yellow glimmered in malevolent glee from the shadows not two paces in front of him._

_In that second, all conscious thought fled from Danny's mind. Trapped in a haze of fear, desperation alone drove his actions. He might have screamed. Pure instinct forced him to flee from those eyes. Thoughtlessly, he left the safe circle of light around him and plunged headfirst into the darkness._

_In Danny's panicked flight through the alleys, he never stopped the think about where he was going. His pace never slowed as he whipped around corners, zigzagging around obstacles, scaling fences. Many times he scraped against corners, tripped on loose stones… but at this point, nothing could have stopped him._

_Nothing, that is, except the large brick wall that suddenly obscured his vision._

_A wordless sound of dismay left Danny's lips as he skidded to a halt before the wall._

"_No… no, no, no!" He whispered, passing his hand over the impenetrable brick, as though his willing it would be enough to open the way before him._

_A low, throaty chuckle effused from the darkness behind him._

_Danny turned, pressing his back to the brick wall… That voice… He knew that voice! He'd heard it before… but where?_

_Yellow eyes opened in the darkness before him and Danny shrunk into the wall. The eyes neared, and as they did they seemed to shift, widening, color bleeding away from the irises._

_Soon, the eyes staring at Danny were no longer sickly red, but hungry obsidian. Shadows peeled away and slowly, Danny began to make out contours, blurry lines grew, shaping the figure before him._

_Another laugh, this time a high, chilling cackle, came from the figure._

_A lipless smile stretched over sharp rotted teeth, pasty skin clinging to an emaciated face—a cruel mockery of his own. Raven hair, parted on the side, lay splayed over one sunken eye as his doppelganger tilted its head back and laughed._

_A limp arm raised into the air and short, stubby fingers with long, ragged claws pointed lazily at Danny. Then the hand rotated and the creature was offering his hand to Danny._

_Danny, clenched his hands into tight fists and bared his teeth. Fully intending to tell the creature to back off, he was taken completely by surprise when the wall he'd been pressed against suddenly just wasn't there anymore._

_Danny flailed. Pin-wheeling his arms wildly he forgot the creature completely as he fought to keep from falling. He reached out for anything, anyone._

_And then, just as his foot slipped, something cold and fleshy wrapped around his wrist enclosing it completely before tightening viciously and lifting up. Danny's hand was lifted above his head. A sudden jerk threw Danny's balance off and he fell back, his toes scrambled at the edge of the ground but soon couldn't reach far enough to touch it. His entire weight was held in his evil copy's hand as he swayed in the air, suspended over nothing._

_The creature's grin widened as it raised Danny bodily with just one hand. Danny looked up, avoiding its eyes, fixating instead on the hand around his right wrist. With his dominant hand so effectively incapacitated, Danny felt unpleasantly helpless. But nonetheless, he reached up with his left hand to try and pry those cold, dead fingers from his wrist._

_The doppelganger laughed, a high pitched squeal of nails on a chalkboard, and tightened its grip savagely. Danny cried out as the sharp claws dug into his skin. Inadvertently, his eyes met those of the creature; and Danny couldn't look away. As pools of obsidian drew him into their dark depths all hints of struggle fell away from him. Danny's left hand fell limp to his side and he hung from the thing's hand like a fish on a hook._

_A black tongue passed over sharp, rotted teeth and the creature leaned in. Keeping Danny above the dark hole, the creature lowered him just enough so they were eye to eye, nearly nose to nose. Then, like a vampire, the creature tilted its head to the side, opening its mouth wide and poised its teeth over Danny's throat._

_Like an outsider, Danny watched this, repulsed and horrified at the monster's actions, yet unable to make himself move away._

_His copy let out a deep breath, exhaling hot air onto Danny's neck. Danny's body reacted for him, flinching away._

_With a soundless laugh, the creature moved its head back, still too close for comfort, but far enough away not to cause panic. It looked into Danny's eyes for a second, then curled its lipless mouth over its teeth in a sneer._

'_**Look down, little Casper'**_

_Slowly, with the distinct feeling that he wasn't going to like this, Danny obeyed. Dragging his eyes away from the doppelganger's and looking down._

_The dark abyss stretched endlessly beneath him, but somewhere within the depths, Danny could make out a glimmer of color._

_Bright, sickly yellow made a sharp contrast to the darkness surrounding the Hound as it paced like a hungry predator beneath him._

_Danny yelped, jerked and kicked out his feet, but somehow, impossibly, the creature was unaffected by Danny's flailing limbs, it just stood there, grinning, waiting. Eventually, Danny calmed, and, though it disgusted him, he reached up and grasped the hand holding his wrist._

'_**What is the matter?' **__The doppelganger cooed with Danny's voice._

'_Don't…' Danny choked on his words. 'Don't drop me.'_

'_**Ohh… So sorry, little Casper.'**_ _It purred. And with its other hand, it reached over Danny's head and slipped something long and rough around Danny's throat._

'_What is this?' Danny cried, with mounting panic, he saw the long rope around his neck. With one hand, the creature tightened the noose. Danny's left hand flew from the creature's claws to the rope around his neck. 'What are you doing?'_

_Then the creature met his eyes and raised its hand. With an almost loving gesture, it caressed Danny's cheek with its bony knuckles._

'**_Your soul will be a welcome addition to the Legion_**_**.'**_

_And without warning, the creature let Danny go._

_Danny's vision blurred, his senses leaving him for base terror. His mouth opened in a silent scream. His body moved on autopilot. He clawed desperately at the creature's hand, trying to get any grip, but the flesh wormed through his fingers like cold water._

_And Danny fell._

_The rope around his neck stretched up into the darkness, whipping the air loosely as he plunged through the air._

_The Hound pacing beneath him had stopped and it opened its maw eagerly, ready to accept him with rows of gleaming fangs into a black pit of madness._

_Danny thrashed in the air, trying to slow his descent but failing. The Hound's mouth enveloped him and Danny's ears were suddenly viciously assaulted by wailing cries. The call of the dead. The voices screamed, begging and pleading anyone to save them from their eternal damnation. But though they yearned to be free, they longed also to drag innocent souls down to share their Hell._

_Danny felt cold fingers trail across his neck and arms. He recoiled but there was nowhere to go. He fell, and the hands of the dead enveloped him in their eternal embrace…_

_And he saw: the rope— flapping wildly—suddenly snapped taunt. The shock went straight to Danny's bones as both the rope and his body pulled him in two different directions. The rope won. Danny's neck arced as the rope yanked him bodily upward—_

* * *

**_I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l _I_l**

* * *

Danny came awake with a strangled cry.

Sheets and blackest suffocated him and he ripped them away in blind terror. Panicking, he flung his body backward, and ended up throwing himself off his bed. He fell to the ground with a loud thud that shook the floor. Kicking the sheets away, Danny clambered to his feet, his heart a permanent resident in his throat, he stood there: staring blankly at the sheets, panting loudly, clutching his pyjama shirt with one hand like a lifeline. Unconsciously, his other hand went to his neck, stroking it softly, before wrapping around it protectively.

"Danny! Hey, you okay in there?"

Danny looked up as though seeing the world from the first time. Realizing his hand was still on his neck, he quickly withdrew it.

"Dan-ny-y" The voice dragged his name out with obvious exasperation.

"I…" His throat closed and Danny coughed, swallowing deeply before trying again. "I'm fine… Jazz." His voice was very soft, not anywhere the annoyed holler it would have normally been and Danny didn't need to see Jazz's reaction to hear the concern in her next words.

"Danny are you—"

"I'm fin-e!" He drew the word out in an effort to sound exasperated. "Geez Jazz, can't a guy fall off his bed from time to time without getting twenty questions?" He paused, hesitating, he opened his mouth to add more, but closed it before saying anything.

"That's what you did? Oh honestly, Danny you can be so clumsy sometimes!" He heard the relieved smile in his older sister's voice, and he mentally relaxed, though his hand remained fisted in his nightshirt.

"Jazz… why are you waking me up anyway? I'm suspended." A rope flashed in his vision, a noose tightening around his neck. Danny shuddered and threw the image from his mind. "Sounds like as good a time as any to sleep in."

"No dice, lil' bro', Mom and Dad want you up and ready to slave around the house pronto."

"Oh no…" Danny groaned. "Do NOT tell me they want me to clean out the ecto-converter again." He was still brushing the goo from his hair from the last time he'd had the pleasure of encountering THAT particular invention.

"Nope! Better." She said. He heard a small laugh and he knew this was not going to be good. "After you went to sleep last night they tried to revamp the oven again."

"Aw man." Danny moaned. Feeling the last dregs of terror flaking off him like shedded skin, his hand fell from his nightshirt. Striding to the door, he threw it open, meeting Jazz's grinning face with his own horrified one. "Please tell me you're kidding…"

"Nope!" His sister's grin widened. She had come a long way from the ghost-phobic girl she'd been not a year ago. Just the mention of their parents' 'abnormal' experiments used to send her into a sulk for hours. But now that she'd gotten more involved in Danny's ghost fighting adventures, she found the whole thing vastly amusing, much to her little brother's chagrin. "You missed a great show, there were little evil ghost fish chasing Dad all around the Kitchen. Then Mom got out the Fenton Smacker—"

"You mean the frying pan." Danny interposed dryly.

"If you say so. And she started to chase the fish around. But every time she tried to whack at them, they'd swerve out of the way and she'd hit Dad instead."

"Oh… good grief… save me." Danny put his forehead in his palm.

"Anyway, the fish were unstable, so eventually Mom and Dad managed to corner them in the F-TEC—"

"You mean the oven."

"—where they exploded… So now…" She didn't have to finish.

"They thought it would be a good character building experience for me to clean it out." Danny said sullenly.

"Well, I _tried_ to tell them about the psychological damage that being exposed to such violence could do to such a young impressionable mind—" There were too many smart comments Danny could have made to that, so he decided to stay silent. "But Dad said that getting you to focus your anger on a more positive outlet—"

"They still want me to be a ghost hunter?" Danny raised an eyebrow, his ineptness anywhere near his parents' equipment was notorious. "I thought they would have given up on that by now."

"Well, I'll be going off to University in a couple of years, so they've practically already lost me. You're the fall back." Jazz smirked.

"Gre-eat, nice to know they wanted me for my skill and dexterity." He said wryly.

"Says the boy who trips over his own feet." She teased.

"Oh, just get outta my room!"

"I'm not in your room, little brother."

"Then go to school already! Don't you have some super, athletic slash brainy keener meeting to go to?"

"I don't have anything before school today. And you don't end sentences with a preposition."

Danny closed the door.

* * *

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* * *

A few hours later, Danny emerged from the F-TEC. Gasping the fresh air, he wiped his sweaty forehead with the only part of his arm that wasn't covered by long elbow-length heavy duty rubber gloves.

"Right then, the oven's clean." He looked at the metal box with a critical eye. Nodding to himself, he stood and swung the door shut, patting the top fondly. "I now pronounce you recovered from yet another Fenton disaster. And officially ready to experience another. Good luck with that."

Tugging the orange gloves, they came free with a wet slap and Danny tossed them into the sink, along with a few sponges and half a dozen rags. They were stained pretty badly from the burned ectoplasm that had been in the oven, he'd have to scrub them clean. But Danny didn't much feel like doing that now. Instead he awarded himself a break for his hard work: grabbing a soda from the fridge before heading into the family room.

Jazz was gone to school and both his parents had left to deal with some ghost related dilemma (though not before giving him strict instructions to clean the oven, study, attach the handle on the inside of the weapons vault (he'd raised an eyebrow at this one, how exactly was he supposed to DO that anyway?) and, most importantly, to stay away from the computer, TV, any video systems, all phones and any other potentially fun pastime.)

But Danny was a teenager. And as a teenager he felt that he was ethically, morally and socially obligated to disobey his parents. So Danny plopped down in front of the TV and flicked it on. Stretching luxuriously on the couch, he tugged down the rolled up sleeves of the old spare sweater he was wearing and propped his legs up on a footstool, bare knees poking through the holes of the equally old, faded pair of jeans he had on.

"Hmm… Now, what do we have here?" He cracked open the soda, chugging half of it in two gulps. The cold, fizzy liquid slid pleasantly down his parched throat. Cleaning the F-TEC had been hard work. Letting out a sigh of satisfaction, Danny cocked the remote.

"News, news, soap opera, sitcom… Fairly OddParents? What's that?" Danny stopped for a second on the colorful cartoon. "_Odd_ name for a cartoon." He muttered, then changed the channel. A picture of Casper High flashed onto the screen and he immediately stopped.

"_And along with the strange rash of dangerous activity ravaging the city at night, last evening was particularly eventful. Several stores were broken into, though again, as usual, nothing was stolen and no alarms were tripped. The would-be thief only broke the glass of the stores and tore the place to shreds before leaving. This strange lack of motivation has become the criminal's signature and police are currently stumped as to the burglar's true intentions. The Amity Bureau of Investigation (ABI) has ruled out the possibility of ghostly activity and is now conducting a thorough investigation to discover this person's identity. Until that time, it has been revealed that they will be referring to this mysterious character as Will-o'-the-Wisp, or simply Willo for short."_

Danny restrained a snort.

"_But the break-ins weren't the only strange events ongoing last night. At about 3AM this morning, Amity experienced an unusual shift in weather as snow fell throughout the city."_

"Snow?" Danny muttered. "It's April…"

"_And then, probably the most traumatic of them all was the event at local school, Casper High. Though the students were clearly affected, the principal decided it would be best to continue classes, giving the student structure in a time of chaos. If any of you viewers have an opinion on this decision, or even on the event itself feel free to call us here at the station, we will be taking calls all day."_

But the announcer's request fell on deaf ears as Danny had long gone, abandoning the TV and his drink as he flew up through the ceiling, heading in the direction of one Casper High.

* * *

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* * *

Danny flew straight into the school, not pausing until he was right outside of Mr. Lancer's classroom—where he knew Sam and Tucker would be—and then he stopped, still invisible and intangible, his hand hovered before the door.

What if they'd gotten hurt? What had happened? Why hadn't he been there to help?

These questions and more swam through Danny's panicking mind. The dream, like all dreams, had long slipped to the back of his consciousness, but it provided a sense of urgency and danger that hadn't been there before.

If Sam and Tucker were okay… then what? Would he talk to them? Ignore them? Would ignoring them keep them safe? Would involving them?

Danny ran a hand through his hair, snow-white bangs flopped back into his face and he brushed them away with irritation. This was too much thinking. He didn't usually plan things this much. That job was for Sam… and Tucker sometimes. Planning things confused him. He liked to just do what he felt was right, free his conscience of guilt. If he thought about things too much he usually ended up making the wrong choice.

So what was the right thing to do?

Danny didn't know. But when he thought about facing this monster… this storm he knew was coming… _alone_… It frightened him like nothing else.

He needed Sam. He needed Tucker. They were his handle on reality, his voice of reason, his confidence, his belief. Without his two best friends he felt hopelessly lost. Confused. It pained him further that _he _was the one causing the separation between them. The look on Sam and Tucker's faces when he'd spurned their concern… Danny had thought he could live with their anger. But now he wasn't so sure…

His decision made, Danny reached through the door, his hand passing easily through the wood, before following with his torso and head.

His first reaction was relief. Sam and Tucker were there, safe, apparently unharmed, and ignoring Mr. Lancer's slow drone as they always did. But when Danny looked closer, he noticed the undercurrent of tension. His empty seat between them sat like a gaping hole. He'd always assumed that either Sam or Tucker would take his seat, were he ever absent. This physical manifestation of the division in their friendship made Danny sad. For the first time, he wondered how close Sam and Tucker really were to each other when he wasn't around.

His thoughts were interrupted when Mr. Lancer's voice suddenly rose.

"In light of the day's events, I think we have all had enough excitement for one day. As such, I will not be assigning any homework—" The teacher had to pause as loud whoops rang through the classroom. Mr. Lancer offered the class a small, rare smile. "Yes, well, don't get used to it. I will also be ending class early for the day but—" The rest of Mr. Lancer's sentence was buried by the scraping of chairs and chattering of students as they eagerly rose to leave.

Danny stood to the side. Though the students would have simply passed through him with them none the wiser, he always felt oddly uncomfortable when someone walked through him. For a brief moment he always perceived this strange sensation pushing against him, not a physical force and yet not exactly a mental one. It was more like the person's very core being brushed him for just that single second in which they passed his heart. The closest way he could get to describing the feeling would be the sensation he got whenever he overshadowed someone else, the bodiless entity he gently displaced to gain control.

When Tucker finally walked by him, Danny reached out and—making his hand tangible—touched his friend's shoulder. Green eyes widened as Tucker froze for a second and Danny made a soft shushing noise. Tucker's head turned to stare straight at Danny, as though he could see him, and he frowned. Danny knew then he was still upset about the argument they'd had the day before. But luckily, Tucker didn't let his anger rule him and he reached back to Sam, tugging her sleeve so that she'd join him.

Sam came up looking at Tucker in mild annoyance as she fixed the short black dress she was wearing. But when Tucker mouthed Danny's name to her, her frown darkened considerably. Danny felt his heart clench at that look, had he really hurt her so much? But he said nothing. Sam made to walk away, but Tucker leaned in and whispered something in her ear. No one passing the small group would have heard Tucker, but Danny's sensitive ears picked it up: "_We have to tell him what happened_".

Sam looked reluctant, but she agreed. As the last student—Dash oddly, trailing behind Kwan with a sullen look on his face—left the classroom, Mr. Lancer came up behind them.

"Is there something you need, Mr. Foley, Ms. Manson?" He asked calmly while balancing stacks of thick folders, a mug and a briefcase in his hands.

"No sir, we're just… talking." Tucker said lamely. Sam rolled her eyes.

"I see, well, should you end up calling a certain classmate between classes to inform him of the current circumstances, I will not hold it against your record." There was a short silence. "Mr. Fenton has shown an impressive recovery in his marks over the past few weeks I would hate to see that all go to ruin because of some oversight in the disciplinary committee." And with that, Mr. Lancer strode out of the room, leaving Sam and Tucker alone with Danny, the latter of which shimmered into sight with his mouth gaping in shock.

"Did Mr. Lancer just say that… about me?" He didn't know what had gotten into his teacher recently. Or had Mr. Lancer always been like that? First Sam and Tucker, now Mr. Lancer, Danny had always thought of himself as an observant guy, how had he missed so much about this people he thought he knew so well?

"Dude, nice outfit." Tucker scoffed, eyeing Danny's threadbare clothes. The blue-eyed teen flushed, shifting uncomfortably.

"Did you want something, Danny?" Sam's humourless voice was ominous. Danny turned slowly to face her.

"Sam…" He didn't know how to start.

"Danny." She crossed her arms. Obviously she was intent on making this difficult.

"Sam… I'm sorry." He sighed.

"For what?" Very difficult.

"For ignoring you, for pushing you away." Here he looked at both Sam and Tucker, so the other boy would know the apology was directed at him too. "For being short-tempered, for keeping secrets, for everything that's been going on these past days. I know I haven't been the easiest guy to be around."

Sam scoffed. "Understatement of the year."

Danny winced, he deserved that. "But I was going through some things, still am… Some things I needed—need—to figure out on my own. I thought that pushing you away would keep you safer—"

"You what?!" Sam said loudly, and glared at Tucker when he shushed her. "How dare you try to control us like that? We're not little porcelain dolls that can be brought out for your fancy then put back in the closet. Friends are people you're open with, people you can share everything else with, people who are your _equals_. This… What you're doing… Is something I'd expect from my parents, not my friend!"

Danny's eyes slid shut. From Sam, that was one of the strongest insults he could have been given. He squeezed his eyes tightly closed then opened them determinedly. "You're right, I know. I'm sorry." The lie curled his tongue, but Danny rationalized it. He wasn't sorry that he'd hid things from them, he wasn't sorry that he'd tried to protect them… He was sorry that they'd found out, sorry that they had reacted so strongly. But he could not stop protecting them.

It wasn't a matter of equality, just the simple fact that he could handle getting thrown into a wall repeatedly. They could not.

"I'm sorry, Sam." Danny lowered his eyes, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans.

There was silence for a few moments then an audible sigh, Danny resisted the urge to look up through his hair.

"Oh Danny." He felt an awkward slap-shove on his shoulder, like Sam wasn't sure whether to hug him or hit him. "You know I can't stay angry at you when you're looking so pathetic."

Now Danny did look up, his cheeks pulling his mouth up into a crooked grin. "Does that mean I'm forgiven?"

"Yes-s… For now." Sam returned the smile and Danny knew everything was fine. Next he looked up to Tucker, who had bowed out of the conversation to pursue a game on his PDA.

"Tuck—"

"Chill man, there's enough sap going around. We're cool, don't worry about it." Tucker's nose never rose from the PDA, but Danny could feel the tension fall away from the group. He let out his first real smile in a while.

"Thanks, guys." And this time he did mean it.

There passed a few seconds in silence, then Sam clapped her hand together. "Okay! Now, let's put it behind us. What's done is done and you're not going to do that again, right Danny?" He didn't answer, but luckily Sam didn't seem to need a response, she took it for granted that he acquiesced. "Let's focus on the present."

Danny looked at her. "Yeah, I saw on the news that something had happened here I came right away—"

"You didn't stay long enough to find out _what _exactly happened, did you." Sam said, exasperated.

Danny flushed pink. "He-y-y, I thought you might be in danger. So… what happened?"

"It was kind of freaky…" Tucker said, fixing his red beret and putting away his PDA. The boy interlaced his fingers, staring at his palms as he remembered what he'd seen. Danny cocked his head at the sudden change in demeanour. The air had gone still. "We were just coming to school like normal, we met up with Jazz and she was telling us—well, me—about how you were stuck cleaning up after your parents again…" It was odd for Danny to find out that they talked about him when he wasn't there. "And then we heard this scream…" Tucker trailed off.

"We thought it was just another shallow cheerleader squealing over some idiotic thing." Sam picked up easily, her confident voice easily sliding over Tucker's hesitant one. "But when we looked around we saw this big group of people gathered around the flagpole, shouting and pointing upward. We went over to see what was going on… and when we looked up we saw… We saw…" Her voice broke off, violet eyes gaining a faraway look. Danny's gaze sharpened; there were few things that could rattle Sam.

"It was Dash's cat." Tucker said lowly.

"It was just hanging there, limbs dangling with big, wide glassy eyes. Its tongue hanging out… Like a morbid flag… It was swaying in the wind." Sam's macabre description made goosebumps rise on Danny's skin.

"I-I don't understand, what are you talking about? What do you mean?" Danny's mind wasn't working; it refused to put the pieces together. He needed them to say it clearly to him.

"Someone hung Dash's cat, Danny." Tucker's grim voice was like a brutal axe. "Someone tied a noose around its neck and strung it up on the flagpole. Suspending it like a piece of meat."

In the silence that followed, Danny could've sworn he heard a chilling cackle echoing in his ears.

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_To Be Continued…_

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GAH! I was supposed to get farther than that! But the dream ended up being Just Too Long! I think this is the single, longest chapter I have EVER written… And that's saying something…

SO! I have a few **questions** for all of you! Have you ever had a dream in which you've died? Or one in which you've realized it was a dream? Also, with regard to this chapter's length: was it too long? Did you groan when you saw the tiny scroll bar or were you excited? The response I get for this question will most likely influence the length of future chapters.

Now, to respond to all you reviewers!

**sciencefreak330:** Hey! Yeah it's weird huh? I totally feel sorry for Danny and yet I can't stop torturing him! It's a good character building experience! (Or so I keep telling myself) XD

**Nylah:** I'm glad you liked my Danny and Jazz! Jazz is one of my favorite characters so she'll probably be important in this story. As for Danny's parents, yeah, it is a little much for them to automatically assume the worst, but I always thought that Danny's parents didn't quite make enough effort to get to know their children (they do it in small, sporadic bursts) and they kinda feel that Danny should just speak up and tell them if something is wrong, otherwise they can't help him. Danny though, will never do this, and this causes a frustrating break between them. What I think is that Danny's father believes that a strong hand and some time will straighten out his son. Maddie though, has worried about Danny for a little longer, and she is upset that her son is pulling away from her. By getting angry at him, she sort of hoped to incite some response from him that would help break through to him… But Jack sent Danny away before that could happen… So yeah, it was a combination of all those things along with what you said! Also, as for Sam and Tucker, I always did wonder how they got along without Danny, since he always seemed like a balance for them. But you know, I don't think they abandoned him, rather they're just upset (Sam especially, since she just wants Danny to open up to her). Danny too, probably helped by pushing them away… But again, I think Sam and Tucker know that Danny won't be very forthcoming with any answers unless they push him… ehe he, I know, it's kind of complicated, but that was my thought process when I wrote up their actions and attitudes, I hope it helped clear some thing up!

**Anonymous Shadow:** Hiya again! Long time no see! Really? This reminds you of another fic? Hmmm, I guess I'll have to work on my originality then! XD I'm glad though that you don't find this story predictable though! That's one of the main points I was trying to achieve when I came up with my plotline. Oh, and since I've actually planned this story to a certain extent, I don't _think_ I will be discontinuing it. I am fairly sure of it in fact, since my stories tend to bug me (and bug, and bug and keep bugging XD) until I've finished, or am satisfied with them. So, even though I may take prolonged breaks, (when evil writer's block of DOOM comes around) I will most certainly eventually continue the story!

**MutantLover09:** Lol! Ok—Backing _away_ from the scary reviewer with the metal bat…(why DO you have a bat with Dash's name on it ANYWAY?! _Looks suspiciously at you_)—XD But seriously have fun! Anyway, so you liked it? That's good, it took so long to write I'm glad you enjoyed it! For me though, I'm never happy if I don't have enough detail in my fics… This usually makes things unREASONABLY long, but... ah well… That just means you'll have a longer fic to read, which is good, right?! XD But you know, I don't know WHERE you got the crazy idea about a HOUND influencing Danny's actions! I mean CLEARLY it's the Box Ghost, I mean… It's so OBVIOUS! That whole 'Fear my corrugated cardboard of DOOM!' thing was all a clever ruse to fool Danny! How could we have missed it all this time:3… And no, sorry, I'm not gonna answer your question, I'm evil like that ;P. Anyway, bye for now and thanks for the heads up (_dodges green boulder_).

**Sasia93:** Yup, your definition was close. A reliquary is a shrine for keeping sacred objects on display… while a sepulcher is a burial vault or receptacle for relics, especially like an altar. So yeah, definitely pertaining to the grave. Anyway, yes, Jazz is definitely going to play a big role in this fic, actually, I'm going to try to give everyone their little shining moment (Mr. Lancer too!), it might make the fic a little long, but we'll have to see how that goes :3. Also, I'm glad you like Danny's inner dialogue, I dislike making characters too OOC, so it's good that you still think he's stayed realistic! Sam and Tucker, too, will be important (they're too good friends to stay angry… Aww) but it's too bad Danny is so secretive; you can just TELL it's going to come around and hit him in the head at some point! Poor guy, he's asking for trouble and he doesn't even know it XP

**zizzy333:** HI! Seriously?! You like my fanfiction! That's amazing! And it means a lot to me especially coming from you, I absolutely love your Danny Phantom fics! So thanks! I hope you liked this chapter as well and lemme just say that I've got most of this fic planned, and you'll NEVER guess what's going to happen at the end of this fic! (_rubs hands together, laughing evilly_) Thanks again for the review!

**Thunderstorm101:** I think I know what you mean about sharing experiences. I have three older sisters and they've always warned me away from making the same mistakes as them… But I know what you mean about other people inciting anger in you. It happens to me as well, I guess I just usually tune it all out while I'm in their presence and then explode later on when I'm alone… I don't really know what the better reaction is, but really… who can say? Anyway, yes, I almost feel sorry for Danny, he's always so worried about his family and friends… aw, he's just too nice XP Makes me want to huggle him (_Danny runs away screaming_) Well! Fine then! No chocolate chip cookies for you! (_silence_)… Ok… I guess he doesn't much like my cookies XD Though after this chapter, who can really blame him? Anyway, bye for now, and I hope you liked the chapter!

**Wishes for Wings:** Hi! That's great that you got new ID…But wait… you chipped your wrist?! How'd you manage to do that!? XD… Anyway, glad you liked the chapter! Heh heh, I'm only just getting started with poor Danny and as for Sam, Tucker and Jazz helping him… Hmmm, seems like there's a much more pressing issue for them to concentrate on, doesn't it? ;P

**pear84: **I… wow… seriously, there are no words to convey how great your review was… I think, to best express it, I can say that I was stuck, majorly, right in the middle of this chapter and your review made me want to sit down and write (like there was this huge wall of writer's block and you gave me a hammer ;P). So, thank you very much for your words of encouragement! Now, to respond to your wonderful, long review: Lol, I know, the beginning did kind of jump right into the action, honestly, when I first started this story I'd pictured just that fight scene… and what can I say? I couldn't wait to write it XP I DID wonder if this would later cause problems, with the pace, and development of the story, so I'm glad you said it didn't! And I can guarantee you that all your questions WILL be answered ;P The Hound, the creature, the couple… I've got it all more or less planned… And it's going to be _fun_ (_evil grin_).

And you like my Danny! Yay! I struggled with his character, still do. Having to find that balance between mature and moody and fun and childish is _hard_ (it doesn't help that I seem to have an incorrigible tendency to writing dark, moody, introspective characters (_rolls eyes_)…). My story will be significantly darker than the cartoon (as I'm sure you've noticed) but I've always enjoyed Danny's character from the show and I'm doing my best to keep him in character… with a few tweaks (please tell me if I ever throw him too far out of character!) :D.

Regarding the other characters… Funny enough, Mr. Lancer has always been one of my favorites (go figure), along with Jazz and Valerie (and Danny, of course!)… The characters I'm most worried about portraying are actually Sam and Tucker (strange, huh?) and Dash. For Dash, I was worried that I'd make him too… nasty, I guess? But I'm happy you thought they were all in character! Thank you again for all the comments you gave (and the fav!)! I've been trying to expand the amount of description I use in this story (without going overboard) C: Oh! And lemme just say that Vlad is definitely coming… oh yeah :3 he's just –cough–'fashionably late' XD… As though Danny didn't have _enough_ problems! At any rate, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Until next time!

**ElusiveVisionary: **Hiya! Thanks for the review! I hope you liked all the others chapters too XD… And this one!

**Adio!**


	10. Rare Game

**Chapter 10**

Chapter 10… Already? When did that happen? ;P

I'm so, so, SO incredibly sorry that this chapter is so late! Beware massive introspection and evil cliffs ahead. Hehe.

**Disclaimer: **No, Cujo, let go of the nice ownership documents, please? (_Grrr… Dog grows really big_) Uh oh… nice… huge doggie, please shrink back to normal. I wasn't trying to steal the ownership documents for Danny Phantom, I promise! (_Yip! Dog shrinks_) Aww… how cute! I'll just be… going… now (_runs away_). Oh wait! (_runs back_) I don't own the Packers either! (_runs away again before the readers can realize what this means_).

Special thanks to **Thunderstorm101**who kindly informed me that Dash's pet was actually a dog (you're right, of course! For some reason I thought it was a cat XD). I hope you don't mind though, if for the sake of this fic, I keep Pooky as a cat (it just fits better :p ). Thanks for telling me!

Also, thankies to **MutantLover09** who kindly picked out a spelling mistake I made (I'm not kidding! Really, thanks, I know it feels a little weird to mention something small like a misspelled word, but I have no beta, and I'm practically blind to my own grammar mistakes, so I really appreciate you pointing that out!).

Enjoy!

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**_The Soul Sepulcher_**

_-By Sholay_

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**_Chapter 10—_**_Rare Game_

Danny was speechless. He staggered back from Sam and Tucker as a graphic picture of Dash's cat swinging atop the flagpole—tongue lolling, legs hanging—flashed across his vision. Standing there, in the middle of Mr. Lancer's classroom, it seemed surreal, he couldn't believe it, what Sam and Tucker were saying. Yet the solemn faces of his friends did not lie.

"Y-you're not serious…" Danny stammered. "W-why?"

"Did you see Dash's face as he was leaving?" Tucker asked with a shake of his head. "He was one of the ones who first saw it—him—the cat… When me n' Sam got here, the police were already there and they were pulling it down…"

"They were asking all sorts of questions." Sam picked up the story. "Classes were cancelled all morning while the police interviewed lots of different people. It wasn't until the Principal herself came down and insisted the students go back to classes that the police backed off. They took numbers from everyone who was there though. They said they might call us—and anyone else from the school—to ask some questions if necessary."

Danny frowned, feeling his shock fading as a different emotion took over. "They're acting like it's a homicide." He didn't mean to sound cold, but his analytical side was taking over. Latching onto the promise of a mystery, he could treat this like it was another ghost hunt, another supernatural adventure. "Why all this fuss… over a cat's death?"He asked, sending an apologetic look at Sam when she frowned at his word choice.

Tucker answered. "They think it's the same guy who's been vandalizing the city over the past few weeks—"

_'Since the museum incident.'_ Danny's mind couldn't help but point out.

"—and they think he—"

"—or she." Sam sent the boy a pointed look.

Tucker didn't even stutter. "—is escalating. The police want to stop 'Willo' before it gets any worse. Besides, this is, like, the first real, _human _problem we've had in Amity for a long time. Of course the police are going to jump on this. I mean, there was all the crazy ghost stuff that used to be goin' on… but, you know, it's not really the _police's _job to handle that, right? And they can't, I mean, it's been your parents and Valerie… and _you_ doing all the work. Not the police. Now they've got this big case and there's no way they're gonna let it go unsolved."

Danny saw the sense here. He nodded. It was simply a matter of the police wanting to regain their status and respect in the eyes of the public.

"It IS a human problem though, isn't it?" Tucker looked at Danny. "I mean, you didn't sense any ghosts last night did you?"

"No…" Danny thought back, putting a hand over his lips pensively. He hadn't sensed anything last night, just as he hadn't the night before, and the night before that… _'Is there something wrong with my ghost sense? But no, no one has seen any ghosts for weeks now. Even Mom and Dad are worried. Where have the ghosts gone? They aren't here; they aren't in the ghost zone…'_

"But Danny," Sam's voice broke into his thoughts.

"Hmm?" His eyes flicked in her direction.

"There's something you should know" Her voice was low and before saying anything else, she hesitated, moving to look out the classroom door into the empty hall. It was break time for the students, no one would be around for a while, but Sam still scouted the area for teachers. Apparently satisfied, she pulled back into the room, then moved away from the doorway.

She beckoned the boys over to the seats, where she sat down sideways at one of the desks. Danny did likewise on the seat opposite her while Tucker sat backwards on top of the desk in front of Sam, placing his feet on the chair and leaning forward.

"Danny, you should know something." Sam repeated, leaning in. Danny shifted closer, looking at her intently and crossing his arms on his knees. "While the police were asking questions… your name came up."

"_What?_" He hissed, leaning back.

"Danny, you knew it would." Sam stated logically, as though that would placate him. "I mean, you're suspendedfor getting into a fight…with_ Dash!_"

Danny clenched his teeth. "I _know that_. But still… I didn't… Youknow I wouldn't! Did you tell them?" He looked at Sam with wide eyes. Her hand was on her knee and he placed his over it, shaking her lightly. "You told them I'd never do something like that, right?"

"Yes, of course we told them." Sam looked down, sounding a little awkward. She shifted her hand underneath Danny's and he immediately pulled away.

"But dude, you know our word isn't enough for those guys." Danny looked up at Tucker, who had a strange smirk on his face, which was quickly wiped off when Danny raised an eyebrow at the hazel-eyed boy. "But don't worry about it, Jazz got your back. The police said the cat was… hung… sometime in the early morning, like, a few hours before school, and Jazz said she saw you in bed at that time."

"Ahh…" Was all Danny said. Jazz had come into his room? When? Sure she had come to wake him up before going to school, but Tucker was implying that she's seen him hours before that. Danny supposed he could have been asleep, but wouldn't he have woken up if someone had come into his room?

"Anyway, we're just giving you a heads up. You've got your alibi, but they still might be calling you to talk. Besides, they have a new suspect now…" Tucker's voice trailed off, he didn't sound too happy about the last part.

"Who?" Danny prompted.

"Nathan." Tucker ran his tongue over his upper teeth, then sat straighter. "Seems as though Dash's been bullying him a lot recently, so the police think he has 'probable cause' or whatever."

"Nathan?!" Somehow, this seemed more shocking to Danny than it should have.

"Yeah, typical police: always running after the wrong person." Sam muttered. "I mean, what about all those jocks? They're so shallow, they'd be willing to do just about anything to knock Dash off his high horse as the school's best athlete. What, do they automatically get a pass just because they're popular? That's so disgustingly chauvinistic!" She paused briefly before giving a cynical chuckle. "But then again, none of those guys are exactly _smart _enough to pull something like this…"

"But Nathan?" Danny was incredulous. "I mean, come on, the worst the guy's ever done was chase Valerie all over the school begging her to be his date for prom."

"Danny, prom is three years from now." Sam said wryly. Tucker grinned and Danny felt his lips twitch, an amused 'huh' leaving his throat.

Just then there was a dull _thunk _at the classroom's door and all three teens' heads swiveled to the front of the room. Danny, realizing he was suspended and technically not even supposed to be out of his house, half-rose from his seat in panic.

"Augh! Blasted sling, can't move anywhere without—"

"Well… speak of the devil…" Sam's voice was a strange combination between wonderment and irritation. Danny looked at her face just to see her expression, but it was oddly closed. Danny looked back to the front a sinking feeling in his chest realizing it was too late to go invisible as a mop of curly brown hair came into view.

"Oh!" Valerie looked up, surprised. "Tucker, Sam! What are you—" Then her eyes met Danny's stupefied ones. "Danny!" Shock gave way to a mischievous smile.

"Valerie." Danny gave a small, lopsided smile, sinking back into his seat and bringing a hand to the back of his head, embarrassed.

"Aren't you supposed to be _suspended_?" The smirk grew

"Eh heh, heh… Um… I'm a… hallucination…?" Danny flushed, he saw Sam raise an unamused eyebrow out of the corner of his eye, but Valerie laughed.

"Only you could make such a lame joke work." She grinned.

"Um… thanks?" Danny raised an eyebrow. "It's a talent you know. One I've worked on for years to perfect."

"Uh huh." Valerie raised her own eyebrow. "Guess it's kinda late to be telling you you've wasted your time then, huh?"

"Oie."

Valerie just smirked.

"And what _are_ you wearing?" She added, eyes squinting in amusement.

This was the second time someone had commented on his baggy clothes. So they used to be his fathers', so what? They were comfortable! Danny rubbed the back of his neck, a self-conscious flush rising in his cheeks. Desperately searching for another topic of conversation, Danny's eyes fell on Valerie and he straightened suddenly, his hand dropping to his side.

"Hey! What happened to your arm?" He asked. Valerie's left arm was covered by a large, white and blue sling which stretched over her shoulder. Danny eyed the sling with obvious concern.

Valerie smiled a tiny, bitter smile, fingering the strap with her right hand. "There was an accident at… work. I was just being clumsy… probably channeling you." The corner of her lips turned up sardonically and she sent Danny a pointed look.

"Hey! What is this, bash Danny day?" Danny raised both his hands, palms outward in a peaceful gesture. Nonetheless, he refused to be sidetracked. Standing up, he made his way over to Valerie. He wished he could ask her how she'd really hurt her arm… It didn't make sense for her to have hurt it on her shift at the Nasty Burger... And he knew all about her second 'job' (i.e. ghost hunting), but _she_ didn't know that he knew… So instead, he asked a different question. "But seriously, are you ok? How bad is it?"

Valerie looked vaguely uncomfortable at Danny's earnest worry and shifted under his scrutiny. A soft smile played at her lips. "Don't worry, it's nothing. Two weeks, the doctor said, and I'll be back, good as new. Besides, it's not my right hand, right? So apparently, I can still function well enough to come to class, take notes and write tests. Lucky me." Valerie laughed.

Danny also laughed. "Well, it's better than me, I can't even come to class."

"Yeah, I heard about that." Valerie's expression suddenly turned serious and it was Danny's turn to be uncomfortable. He turned to the side, shifting his hands into his pockets. Valerie eyed his profile. "I saw the fight, Danny."

"Yeah, yeah… I know…" Danny ran a hand through his hair, it immediately flopped back. "I shoulda… I shouldn't've—"

"It was impressive."

"Huh?" Danny looked back at her, stunned. "What?"

"Excuse me?" Sam suddenly felt it was prudent to enter the conversation. She stood up, walking over to join Danny and Valerie. Tucker meanwhile, leaned back on the desk, watching silently and looking amused. "You think it's okay for Danny to just go around beating people up?"

"Of course not!" Valerie looked at Sam, affronted. "But Dash was acting way outta line! And he hit Danny first! Danny was acting in self defense… And besides, Dash deserved to get hit for what he said about your family." She directed the last part of her sentence at Danny, looking at him straight on.

"It's never ok to hit someone! Danny should have found another way!"

"Sometimes there is no other way!"

"There's always another way!"

"Guys! GUYS!" Danny interrupted the girls with a shout and they both turned to look at him. Tucker's quiet chuckles could be heard in the background. "Look…" Danny turned his head to the ground, putting a hand in the hair at his nape, then fisting it. What was right? Violence? Pacifism? Would it have been better if he'd taken the beating? Would it have solved anything? "I… don't know what I should or shouldn't have done… But I went overboard. I shouldn't have kicked him like that. I shouldn't have picked up the bat…"

"Danny, we all make mistakes. It happens. It was an accident." Valerie soothed.

"Oh so that makes it ok?" Sam spat caustically.

Valerie scowled darkly. "Stop putting words into my mouth!"

"I only put what you give—"

"_Guys…_" Danny groaned. Why did Sam and Valerie always do this? Why couldn't they just get along? He got along fine with Sam and he got along fine with Valerie, doesn't that logically translate to them getting along with each other?

He looked between the two girls, noting the evil stares they were giving each other.

Apparently not.

"Hey Danny," Suddenly Valerie tore her eyes away from Sam and she smirked at Danny. "You know you have some pretty good moves."

"Huh?" Danny was caught off guard. _'Moves? What's she talking about?'_

"Well, I mean, of course there's room for improvement…"

"HUH?!" Danny gaped and Tucker burst out in a wave of giggles that nearly knocked him off the desk.

"But you showed some promise. The way you kicked Dash in the chest was nearly professional! Where'd you learn how to fight like that?"

"Y-you… uh… you—ah, you're talking ab-about… my, my fighting?" Danny stumbled over the words, ducking his head and looking up at Valerie bashfully.

"Yes…" Valerie said slowly. "What did you…?"

"Oh _Danny!_" Sam burst out laughing and smacked Danny on the arm. "You're so… clueless!"

Danny muttered something unintelligible, hunching his shoulders and pushing his hands deeper into his pockets. His cheeks were flaming red.

After a few seconds, Danny mustered the ability to speak. "Never mind, never mind. What were you going to say, Valerie?"

"Umm…" Valerie looked divided between poking fun at Danny's obvious misconception or taking the tactful high road. She opened her mouth, giggled, cleared her throat and tried again. "Ahh… Danny… I just wanted to… heh, heh… I mean… your fighting… Oh yeah! Your fighting! It's got potential! Where'd you learn how to fight?"

"Well…" Danny was resolutely ignoring the fact that his cheeks were hot enough to fry eggs on. "My Mom's a ninth degree black belt and she taught me a thing or two, I guess."

"You guess?" Valerie sounded skeptical. Silently, she was impressed at the information on Danny's mother. She hadn't known Mrs. Fenton knew martial arts. It was something to make a note of. "Those were some pretty honed instincts you showed there."

"Well, it's for ghost hunting and stuff. My parents had to teach Jazz and I some stuff, just in case. That, and they've always held out for another ghost hunter in the family. And with Jazz heading to med school, I'm pretty much their best bet." Danny grinned.

"You?!" Valerie crowed. "Mr. 'I'm-not-allowed-to-handle-any-potentially-breakable-glassware', a ghost hunter?! How many beakers did you break before they banned you from the labs, 35?"

"Hey," Danny smirked, pointing a finger at Valerie. "I'll have you know that I could blast off the head of my sister's Bearbert Einstein when I was three. And it was thirty-_four_ beakers."

This comment led to a range of comments and expressions from his friends.

"Weren't you supposed to be aiming for a target nowhere _near _Jazz's bear?" Sam asked dryly.

"Never underestimate the mind of my three year old self." Danny nodded sagely. "I was a nefarious little kid."

"Doesn't your sister still have that bear?" Tucker wondered.

"Mom sowed the head back on." Danny answered.

"…Bearbert…_Einstein?_" Valerie still hadn't moved on from that point.

"…Eh… I've told you, compared to the _rest _of my family, I'M the normal one." Danny snorted and he, Tucker and Sam all laughed, as though sharing some private joke. Valerie raised an eyebrow, stepping back and looking between the three friends silently, feeling a little left out.

They did this often, she noted, they acted and moved as one unit: a well oiled machine that had been working together for so long its flaws were invisible. They seemed to know everything about each other, down to the very last detail. Valerie had seen them communicate entire sentences in silence, with only an exchange of glances passing between them. She had seen them mediate each other, hide each other's faults and build each other up to heights Dash and the other A-list crowd could never, ever hope to achieve.

But Valerie had to wonder: were they too perfect? Was there no weak spot in their armour of friendship? Was there no small crack which she could exploit, anywhere for her to dig in her nails and pull?

Was there no room for her in their tight-knit group?

Then Valerie's eyes landed on Danny. Blue eyes, clearer and brighter then the sky, sparkled in the light as he threw his head back. Messy black hair, darker than ebony, swept through the air and splayed across his boyish features as he laughed at something Tucker said. And what a beautiful laugh it was. Valerie had heard many different kinds of laughter: there was Dash's smug chuckle, Paulina's screechy cackle, Star's fake giggle, her father's caustic mumble… but Danny's laughter… Danny's laughter was pure. It lacked any form of malice: there was no self-consciousness; Danny wasn't afraid to throw himself into his emotions with reckless abandon, and there was no self-satisfaction… not like Dash, whose dark laughter, grating on her ears, only came at the expense of someone else's pain.

It was odd… that Danny's laughter would remind her so much of… And it was weird to think this, because Danny was in no way, shape or form, feminine… But his laughter, it reminded her a lot of what her Mother's used to sound like…

Valerie sometimes couldn't understand it. When her dad had gone broke and she had plummeted from the social standing, she'd thought she was going to be alone forever. Sure, she'd held onto some misbegotten dreams of regaining her popularity, of shoving her way back into the A-list crowd… But really, there was only so long one could stay blind to the world. And having one's supposed 'friends forever' drop you in less than a second, like wet trash, was a very good eye-opener.

She had been misguided and shallow. She had held onto her stupid concepts of social hierarchy, and she had shunned Danny's concern like it was worthless. All she had seen was a stupid looser, with his pervert sidekick and freaky goth girlfriend. Valerie still winced when she remembered how mean she'd been to Danny.

But Danny had persisted.

She remembered that class project they'd had together, where they'd pretended they were parents looking after a 'baby'… or in that case, a sack of flour. She'd been overwhelmed at the time, what with her Dad being broke, having to get used to a completely new lifestyle, and her new two new jobs: the first at the Nasty Burger, where she'd spent hours dressed in that suffocating, humiliating costume of Nasty Ned, and the second… Her much more _fulfilling _job as the resident ghost hunter.

Even still, she had been unreasonably selfish, trying to put the weight of the entire project on Danny's shoulders. Then, when Danny had abandoned her with their flour sack 'baby' she had been infuriated with him. How _dare _he make her do the project on her own?! _She_ was the one with two jobs. _S__he _was the one with her life going down the tubes… Not that she'd told him about any of that… But he could have been more sensitive!

But then, he'd shown up, at the last possible second, and _apologized._ He'd looked her straight in the eye, brushed away the ruined flour sack that she'd inadvertently destroyed because of that stupid _Danny Phantom_, and he'd _apologized_. To _her_! She hadn't said anything in return, being too shocked at the time. Apologies were as rare as sincerity in the popular crowd. Yet here Danny was, offering her both.

It wasn't until much later that night—when she'd held the dirty, empty flour sack in her hands, staring at it blankly—that she realized what a fool she'd been. If anything, _she_ should have been apologizing to _him._ But no, there he'd been, adorable eyes and all, asking her to forgive him for something she couldn't even blame him for. It was then that Valerie's head had shot up, eyes wide with shock. She had never thought this way before. Having her eyes opened and actually feeling _guilty_?! It was unbelievable to her that this one boy, someone she barely even knew, had inspired this epiphany in her.

Had made her want to be a better person.

Valerie believed that that was the moment when she'd fallen for him.

And as Valerie looked at Sam, Tucker… and Danny… together, laughing, talking and teasing each other, she realized she really didn't care if there was no room in their little group for her. She would _make _room. It didn't matter if Sam hated her; it didn't matter if Tucker thought of her as his back-up spare date for the prom. It didn't _matter, _because she knew she had Danny's favour and that was all she needed.

Valerie looked up. Her eyes passed over Danny's lithe, relaxed form. His posture was casual as he leaned back, hands resting deep in his pockets. A lopsided grin broke out on his face as he ducked his head, bringing one hand to the back of his neck in embarrassment at something Sam said.

It really was too bad things hadn't worked out between them. When he had asked her out, she'd literally been on cloud nine. They'd had a few, amazing weeks together and Valerie had never thought, not in a million years, that _she_ would have been the one to end things between them… But that damned _Phantom _had ruined everything. Her secret, her passion…her vengeance had nearly gotten one of the people she cared most about in the world hurt. Danny. Sweet, guileless, _Danny_. Was nearly hurt by _her _demons.

_No_. She shook her head. She would never let anyone hurt Danny. Better that she kept her distance now, and maybe one day, when her revenge was complete, and _Phantom _lay cold and dead at her feet, _then _maybe, they… could be something… again.

Valerie never considered the possibility that by the time she'd fulfilled her ambition, it would already be too late.

A loud bell rang through the room, shattering Valerie's thoughts and the easy atmosphere in the room. Danny's head shot up in sudden panic.

"Oh no! Break is over? Already?! I-I'm suspended. I'm not supposed to be here. I gotta leave. Now!" Danny dodged around Sam and Valerie with surprising grace and shot toward the door. Valerie's eyes widened as she realized what he was going to do.

"Hey!" She reached out her hand to him. "You can't go out there, it's too late, you'll be seen for sure!"

Danny halted, his hand on the doorknob. He looked like he was ready to throw open the door, regardless of what Valerie was saying.

"Just let him go!" Sam interrupted anxiously, shooting a frown at Valerie. "Danny knows what he's doing, or don't you trust him?"

"Excuse me, but half the time, Danny _doesn't_ know what he's doing." Valerie shot back haughtily, staring down the slimmer girl. By God, she couldn't stand this girl. "So ex_cuse _me for being cautious." She could practically _hear _Sam's teeth gritting together. "Now, Danny, jump out the window."

"WHAT?!" A trio of yells answered her and Valerie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Honestly these guys spent too much time together.

"We're only two floors up, and there's a tree right outside the window. Now, I'm assuming you're at least dexterous enough to climb a tree?" Valerie sent Danny a teasing grin.

Danny sent her a look and Valerie laughed, taking it as an affirmation. She walked over to the window, yanking it up with one powerful tug. She held it there, open as far as it could go. Standing to the side, she let go of the window, making sure the pane would stay up, then made a courteous gesture toward the open space.

"Ladies first." She fought to keep her lip from twitching, but didn't quite succeed.

Danny strode over to her, stopping so close she had to look up to meet his eyes. She drew in a deep breath, and forced herself to focus on his nose. This was not the time to loose herself in his eyes. She was a hunter dammit! She did NOT do the fluffy, swooning thing. Silently though, she couldn't help but wonder when he'd gotten taller than her.

"I'm gonna get you back for that, missy." Danny said in a low, smooth voice she had no idea he'd possessed. "You'd better watch you your back."

Words escaped Valerie.

Danny turned back then, bidding a cheery goodbye to Sam and Tucker, and the spell was broken. Valerie cursed Danny's good nature under her breath. He was so _clueless._ He had no _idea _about the affect he had on people.

Taking her last chance, she reached out and touched his arm. She refused to appear shy, so she made the gesture harsh, gripping his upper arm with her hand. Danny turned his head to look at her questioningly. Though he clearly missed it, Valerie was not so oblivious to Sam's spiking hostility.

"I want to fight you." Valerie said definitively.

Danny looked visibly shocked at this. "Me?!" He gaped.

Valerie laughed, letting go of his arm. "Yes, _you_."

"But Valerie, I can't—"

"Stop making excuses." Valerie said sharply. "I saw you out there with Dash. You can most certainly fight. Now I want to see just how well. Besides, you seem to be a bit paranoid. You lashed out at Dash without even thinking, right?"

This topic was obviously making Danny uncomfortable; he shifted, tugging at the collar of his ratty sweatshirt and avoiding her eyes. At length, a quiet "Yeah…" made its way out of his mouth.

"I can help you with that. By fighting me, you'll get all that nervous energy out of your system so it won't just explode on the next person who pisses you off."

Danny winced, but seemed to be thinking about her words. He stared at something on the floor for a few seconds before raising his head to meet her eyes. "Ok, you've got a deal."

Valerie didn't think her smile could have gotten any bigger. "Good! Then as soon as this thing is off," she gestured toward her sling. "It's a date." As soon as the word came out of her mouth Valerie cringed. She had NOT meant to say that, why had it slipped out? Had Danny noticed?

She looked up, expecting Danny to be giving her some _'are you insane?'_ look, but he was still smiling at her brightly, as though he had never heard what she's said.

Valerie was disbelieving. _'Is it even possible for one guy to be so oblivious?'_

But however clueless Danny was, Sam most certainly was not. And she wasted no time before making her opinion known.

"Danny, you can't _do _that." She came up to them and gave Danny a significant look, cocking one eyebrow. Danny looked back at her and, to Valerie's extreme irritation, she realized they were doing that silent communication thing again.

"Aww, it's not so bad Sam," Danny smiled. "Besides, Val here's an expert; she could really teach me some stuff." Valerie was pleased by this comment.

"And besides, she's right." His blue eyes were speculative. "I should have a more… positive outlet for my aggression." Then he grinned again. "That way, the next time Dash insults you I'll be able to stop myself from punching the living daylights out of him… No matter how much I'll want to."

And just like that, Sam stopped arguing. Her face got the lightest tinge of pink to it and Valerie let out a puff of air between clenched teeth. Honestly, did Danny have some sort guidebook on what to say to girls? If she didn't know any better she'd think he did it on purpose. But then she remembered that this was _Danny_… Yeah, no, not possible..

Danny was looking between the two quiet girls—both of whom were deep in their own thoughts— with a look of vague bafflement. As though finally realizing the awkwardness of the situation, the corner of his lip quirked and he took a few steps back, raising his hands, palm facing outward.

"Hey, hey, I'm just suspended for a few days. This isn't goodbye forever, you'll see me again soon enough!"

This comment earned him an exasperated look from Valerie and a smack on the arm from Sam.

"Typical boys, always think the world revolves around them." Sam said.

"Or at lest, they think girls do." Valerie added. Sam snorted.

Danny made a face, clutching his arm where Sam had smacked it in mock pain. He didn't retort though, instead, after a few seconds of silence, the expression on his face melted away and he looked up in the direction of the door.

"Well," He said to no one in particular. "I've wasted your time for long enough. I've gotta get back before my parents come home anyway."

This comment made Valerie wonder why he'd made the risk to come to the school in the first place, but she didn't get the chance to ask as Danny moved toward the open window.

The raven-haired boy climbed up on the window sill then, and in a single, clean move, jumped to the tree neighbouring the school. Valerie watched in muted fascination as he flawlessly navigated his way down the branches, not missing a single step. There was nothing of the shy, clumsy Danny she knew in his movements, and Valerie had to wonder exactly _how much _she didn't know about Danny Fenton

Her thoughts were interrupted once more by Mr. Lancer entering through the door.

"Ms. Gray, Ms. Manson and Mr. Foley! You're all early for English class. Since you're all so keen to get started on your educational endeavours, why don't we begin our discussion on last night's reading assignment?"

Valerie mentally groaned, Tucker was not so reserved.

And the day wore on.

* * *

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* * *

When Danny arrived home, the first thing he did was to float through his house invisibly, checking to see if his parents were there. Luckily there was no sign of the older Fentons, but as Danny touched down in the family room—letting himself turn back human with a flash—he couldn't help but wonder why. As the local ghost hunters, Danny's parents were often called out for various jobs—everything from crop circles to monsters under the bed—in the middle of the night. But it was rare for them to be so busy in the morning.

Especially since Danny already _knew_ there were no ghosts terrorizing the town.

Danny walked through the empty house until he reached the kitchen. Circling the counter, he stopped in front of the sink.

Maybe his parents were busy investigating Dash's cat's death? Or maybe they were looking into that vandalism case… Or—since Tucker said the police thought they were connected—maybe both?

Danny looked down into the sink, remembering the sponges and towels he'd thrown in there almost an hour earlier. He picked up one of the dirty sponges and tried to squeeze it, but the gooey green stuff it had been soaked in had hardened and now it felt not dissimilar from a rock in his hand. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the sponge under the tap and ran the water.

Five minutes later, plumes of hot steam were rising from the sink and the water was still running straight over the glowing green sponge without any of it soaking in.

Sighing, Danny turned the tap off. Reaching down, he found the sponge too hot to the touch and so, with a small mental exertion, managed to create an icy chill around his hand before picking the the thing up.

He grinned at his new discovery: he had at least some minute control over his ice powers while in human form. He doubted he could do anything fancy, but it was still nice to know.

_'At least nothing is going haywire like last time.' _Danny immediately sobered as he remembered yesterday's incident in the bathroom.

Coming back to the matter at hand, Danny placed the sponge on the counter then picked up one of the cleaning cloths. A brief test—consisting mainly of rapping the hardened material on the counter and receiving dull '_C__lunk! Clunk!' _sound in return—led him to surmise that they too were completely ruined. The orange rubber gloves, however, hadn't gotten much green goo on them and were salvageable. He replaced these in the cupboard.

Carrying the sponges and cloths down to his parent's lab, he barely hesitated before dropping them into the Fenton Garbage Destroyer. Closing the lid of the deep cylindrical device, he pressed the ON button and a loud rumble filled the room, punctuated by random intervals of crunching and grinding. It was not that unusual to have to dispose of things in such a manner in the Fenton household. After living for nearly fifteen years in a home where his parents' cooking would often come alive and try to eat him back, Danny had learned to take weirdness in stride.

Once the sounds died down from the disposal, Danny turned the machine off and left it. His parents would get rid of the waste later.

Danny drew in a deep breath as he gazed around his parent's lab. It looked oddly foreign to him, even though nothing much had changed in the room since the last time he'd been in here.

The steel-blue, metal paneled walls were polished and ran in smooth curves from the ceiling to the floor. Heavy titanium tables were attached to the ground with large, round rivets and three-inch thick shelves protruded from the walls. Covering almost every bare surface were the fruits of his parents' labours: microscopes and pipettes were strewn about the tabletops. Papers depicting equations with no rhyme or reason filled up any empty spots. Beakers full of unknown liquids—coloured neon blue, purple, pink and green—were sitting on what looked like a gurney and bubbled seemingly of their own volition. And unfinished weapons: guns lying naked, their inner machinery exposed, lasers that occasionally sparked with electricity and vicious looking blades with serrated edges were stacked against every wall. These were ghost hunting weapons that Danny's parent's had been working on, either unfinished or failed. Danny shivered as he warily eyed the more painful looking weapons.

_'Definitely filed under the 'must avoid' column.'_

Standing on the ground, reaching a height that was at least a foot above Danny's own, and resembling an overgrown dream catcher, was the Fenton Ghost Catcher. Behind it was the door to the weapons vault.

And finally… Danny's eyes slid half way closed as his gaze fell on the last object in the lab.

…The Fenton Ghost Portal.

The dark-haired teen's hand reached up to touch the circular frame and he started. He hadn't realized he'd walked so close to the portal. Looking back, he brushed the metal frame and ran the tips of his fingers along the contours of the metal. In his mind, he knew the metal should be cold. But to his altered body, it felt lukewarm.

Often, Danny wondered what his life would have been like if he'd never taken that fateful step into the portal. He'd been foolish, thinking he could make his parents feel better by fixing their greatest discovery. He remembered the day they had brought him and Jazz down to unveil their newest creation. His sister had been skeptical and he'd been largely disinterested, wishing he were somewhere else. His dad had covered the portal in a thick white sheet and his mom had been jumping around from one desk to the other, checking equations and graphs, jittery and nervous. He'd never seen his parents so excited. They were like little children, hopping up and down on the balls of their feet, eager and impatient.

Danny hadn't been overly surprised when the invention didn't work… Really, a ghost portal? Opening up to another dimension? Sure, it was a cool idea and all, but that stuff was for science fiction novels, not real life.

But when the portal stuttered and wheezed, emitting a plume of grey smoke: failing in a spectacular show of sparking electricity and high pitched whines, Danny would never forget the looks on his parents' faces. It was like watching the last moments of a dying bird. One moment there was life and shine dancing in his mother's eyes, and the next it was gone, dead.

Jazz had reprimanded their parents, telling them that of _course _it wouldn't have worked. They were _scientists_, they based their work on _fact _and _theories,_ not all this supernatural nonsense.

Danny had been watching his parents' faces, and as their expressions dropped, further and further he'd felt his heart clench into a tight ball of sympathy. He did not like it when his parents felt bad. He had wanted to help, he just didn't know how.

So, when he, Sam and Tucker had gone down to the lab, and Sam had told him to check out the portal, Danny had realized his opportunity. If he could fix the portal, his parents would be happy! They'd been mopping about for days since the failure of the portal and Danny wanted nothing more than for them to go back to normal…

…And from there—Danny pulled his hand away from the portal—it was history.

His ghost powers, his parents success, and all the subsequent ghost fights, the near invasion of Amity… It was all because of this portal. If he had never made it work… Would the ghosts still be haunting Amity? Would Vlad have ever come into their lives? Would he have gotten better grades, been a better son to his parents?

Danny didn't know.

Suddenly, as though realizing where his thoughts were taking him, Danny shook his head and turned away from the bright yellow and black warning sign on the portal.

Thinking about what could have been, what might have been… That path led only to madness. This was what _is_. This was the _truth_. And he could not escape that, so he just have to live with it.

Danny looked up into the white fluorescent lights lining the ceiling, squinting slightly as they irritated his sensitive eyes.

What had started all this random thinking?

Oh yes, he'd been wondering why the lab looked so foreign to him… Maybe it was because he hadn't been down here in such a long time?

Danny would often come down to the lab to empty the thermos of captured ghosts, or to travel into the ghost zone via the portal, but… he hadn't done that in a while. With the obvious lack of ghosts in Amity at the moment, there'd been no reason for him to go down into his parent's lab and now that he was standing in here, it just felt odd.

Which of course, brought him to another question: if there were no ghosts around, then how HAD Valerie hurt her arm? She'd said she'd hurt it at her job, Danny assumed she was talking about her secret 'job' as a ghost hunter… but maybe she was being truthful and she'd actually sprained it while on her shift at the Nasty Burger?

…Where _were _the ghosts anyway?

Danny realized his circular questioning and put his thumb and index finger around the bridge of his nose, massaging lightly. Suddenly, he felt very tired. Actually, it wasn't a new thing, ever since he'd woken up in the morning he'd had that itchy eye feeling of not having gotten enough sleep.

Figuring that there wasn't much for him to do anyway—chores could wait, and he didn't have any schoolwork yet—Danny made the spontaneous decision to take a short nap. Climbing up the stairs, he made his way sluggishly to his room. Consciously thinking about his tiredness seemed to make him even more tired and by the time he reached his room he was yawning with every second step.

Danny was asleep before his head hit his pillow.

* * *

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* * *

"_Tucker._"

"_Tucker!_"

"_TUCKER!" _This time the hissed call was accompanied by a flying piece of crumpled paper.

"OW! Hey! What the—!?"

"Ms. Manson, Mr. Foley! Is there something you wish to share with the class?"

"No ma'am." Sam and Tucker chorused in low voices.

"Very well, then might I suggest you keep your lovers spat on the burner until the end of class."

Sniggers floated around the classroom and Sam scowled darkly while Tucker grinned, not looking at all displeased by the idea. This prompted Sam to chuck another paper ball at Tucker's head.

"Ow!"

"Ms. Manson!"

"Sorry. Slipped." Sam glared narrowly at Tucker, who gulped.

Just then, the bell rang, signalling the end of the school day. With a collective sigh, the students stood, scraping back their chairs and moving toward the door in a thick throng of people. Sam moved forward, gripping Tucker by his yellow sleeve and dragging him unceremoniously out of the classroom.

"Hey, Sam! What's with all the manhandling? If you wanted me so bad, all you had to do is ask."

"Stop with all the bad jokes Tucker! This is serious!" Something in Sam's expression must have clicked, because Tucker immediately sobered.

"What is it, Sam?" He let himself be dragged to their lockers, where they collected their books and jackets before slamming their lockers closed. Sam didn't answer, not until they had left the school and rounded the next block.

"It's Danny." Sam said finally, tucking a strand of pitch black hair behind her ear. "I think he's hiding something from us."

Tucker sighed, looking away from his friend and focusing instead on the cracks in the sidewalk. "Sam, we've gone through this. Danny already explained, and he said he was sorry."

"No, I mean, I think he's hiding something BIG." Sam made a wide gesture in the air.

Tucker frowned. "How big?" He yielded to Sam on this, knowing well that she was able to read Danny's quiddities better than he ever could.

Sam made a frustrated sound. "I don't know! _Big_, big." She put her hand on a passing tree trunk and spun around it so she was facing Tucker full on. He stopped before her. "Look, I know Danny apologized to us and everything, but he never actually _told _us what he'd been hiding from us."

"And I thought you were okay with that, you said so yourself: it's all in the past." Tucker was apparently loosing interest in the conversation, and he pulled out his PDA.

With a quick swipe, Sam snatched the device away. Tucker protested, leaping for it, but she held it behind her, easily dancing away from his grasping hands. "Well maybe I'm not so okay with it. This… whatever it is, is affecting him. He's acting strange, and it's not normal!"

Tucker suddenly stopped chasing after his PDA. He straightened and Sam could see a mischievous sparkle in his hazel eyes that immediately made her wary.

"Oh NOW I understand." He grinned. "You're still jealous about Danny's date with Valerie!"

"It is not a date!" Sam blurted before she could stop. Shooting Tucker an annoyed glare when he smirked knowingly, she attempted to save face. "And it has nothing to do with that. Danny can do whatever he wants, I don't care."

"Even if it's dating Valerie?" Tucker asked innocently, looking at his nails.

"Hmph." Sam crossed her arms and Tucker took that moment to snatch back his PDA.

Sam had had enough of his games. "Will you just listen for a second?! Honestly, you don't always have to have your nose in that thing!"

"Don't insult Rosalina!" Tucker held his hands over his PDA protectively.

"You have a name for it?!"

"Well, she's lasted four months now! None of my other PDA's have lasted that long before getting blasted into poor, little, nanochips by one of Danny's ghost fights."

"So what, this is your one-third-of-a-year birthday present to it?" Sam asked caustically.

"As a matter of fact it is! And she's a _she. _You're being insensitive!"

"…" Sam restrained herself from making a jab at Tucker's obvious lack of social interaction and instead took a death breath before going back to the topic at hand. "Look, Danny's been acting weird. Do you agree with me or not?"

"Uh huh." Tucker nodded slowly, relaxing his posture over his PDA.

"And this has been going on for awhile."

"Uh _huh._"

"There haven't been any ghosts around and strange things have been going on around town with that freak, _Willo,_ or whatever."

"Uh huh."

"Now tell me, when did all this weird stuff start happening?"

Tucker thought. "I dunno… a few weeks ago?"

"Two weeks and four days, Tucker. Two weeks and four days. And what _happened _two weeks and four days ago?"

"We… uh…"

"At _school_, Tucker."

"We, uh, went… to… the… museum?"

"Exactly! And that was when Danny fought that ghost that he refused to talk to us about. He came back hurt and bruised and then he had that nightmare."

"Yeah… so what?" Tucker raised an eyebrow. "I mean, I don't like it either, but Danny's always getting hurt in those fights."

"But not that bad. He's gotten much better since he first got his powers; you know it's almost been a year, now."

"Yeah…" Tucker got a far away look in his eyes as he remembered that fateful day that Danny got his ghost powers. He cringed and a shiver ran down his spine as he remembered the chilling screams of his best friend getting electrified in the ghost portal. A morbid part of him always wondered how much pain Danny had been in that day, or if it had even hurt at all. After all, didn't the nerves kinda shut down after experiencing such a shock, all at once? But another part of him was repulsed by this curiosity and ashamed of it. It alarmed him that he would wonder about the amount of _pain _his best friend had endured. It also brought back memories of his old jealousy and how that had nearly destroyed him… And so, like all the times before, he buried this curiosity. Some things were meant to be left in the past… and besides, Tucker did not want to see the look Danny would give him if he ever asked his friend that question.

Sam, as though sensing Tucker's thoughts, had grown silent herself. However, her silence was tinged by guilt. Tucker looked at her. Strong, sensible, dogmatic, Sam Manson. Such a sharp contrast to his own wayward, 'do-what-you-want-when-you-want' personality. Together, they didn't really get along; Danny was their buffer, acting as the calm sea that regulated the unyielding Earth and unpredictable sky. But Tucker nonetheless cared for Sam like a best friend, or a sister. She didn't need to be coddled. Her personality was too stubborn for that, and she didn't need to be protected, the very idea was absurd. Sam was predictable. Sam was constant.

And self-deprecation did not befit Sam Manson.

But Tucker knew why she was feeling this way. Though many months had passed, and Danny had long forgiven her—if he'd even blamed her at all—Sam had never forgiven herself. She still blamed herself for telling Danny to put on the Hazmat suit and step into the ghost portal.

'_Fun_' she had called it, '_exciting_', '_who wouldn't want to check out a ghost portal in their own house?_'

Only it hadn't been so much fun when Danny had accidentally turned it on and electrocuted himself to near death.

_'Sometimes it's hard to believe he survived that… Or if he's even alive, really… After all, can someone really be half-dead?'_

But that was aside the point. Sam blamed herself for Danny's half-ghost status. And she shouldn't, but Tucker knew that nothing he could say would change her mind, so instead he sighed and opted to change the topic.

"So where are you going, Sam, with all this?"

Sam snapped back to the present, and Tucker was silently pleased to see the conviction return to her orchid eyes. Tucker grinned to himself as he remembered once when he'd asked her why she wore such freaky contacts. They'd been 8. Danny had backed away with a look of horror and pity while Sam wound back to deliver her trademark right hook…

Tucker rubbed his jaw. Yup… memorable. That was Sam for ya.

"I want to go back to the museum."

"Huh?" Tucker suddenly focused back on the conversation.

"Everything started there, right? I want to check the place out. Danny said there was someone in the room. We didn't see anyone. Maybe it was a ghost. Maybe something in that room is causing all the vandalism that's been going around. Maybe something in that room killed Dash's cat!"

"Whoa, whoa! Hold on there!" Tucker raised one hand, gesturing for Sam to stop, and looked around the street with wide eyes. Sam's voice was getting louder, and people were beginning to stare, so he grabbed Sam by the arm and pulled her off the sidewalk. They crossed the street and walked into an alley between the houses. Following the dark, secluded alley for a few minutes, Tucker led the way until the narrow path opened up to a small, quiet playground.

This was their place. His, Danny's and Sam's. He and Danny had found it way back in kindergarten, and they had brought Sam here a few years after that. Small and quiet, without a tree or blade of grass in sight, this was their little concrete world. It was simple: a short, rusty slide, a junglegym that barely reached Tucker's head and a set of squeaky swings, three, in a row. A thin, circular cobblestone pathway surrounded the little play area.

To his childlike, five year-old mind this place had signified success. That was why he'd always like it. It was their personal trophy, their proof that they had gone on an adventure and come home winners, like going on a treasure hunt and finding a chest full of gold coins. Tucker had loved the playground because it was _theirs_, and theirs alone.

But what had really struck him, and stuck with him for all these years, was what Danny had said when Tucker asked him why he liked this place. Danny had paused, and gotten that far-away look in his eyes that he always got whenever he was thinking deeply. He hadn't answered for a while and Tucker had begun to think he hadn't heard the question. He'd brushed it aside, and opened his mouth preparing to change the topic, when Danny had begun talking.

Danny's answer had confused him. He'd spoken slowly and deliberately, as though trying to make sure that he said the right words. He had spoken about human nature and responsibility.

Danny had said that he liked the playground because it was dead: there was not a single speck of green in the entire place, no weeds grew in the cracks and no birds visited it in the summer. The place was stone: nothing breathed, nothing moved… except for them.

Tucker had been baffled, and he'd said so. He could not understand why Danny would ever like such a thing. He himself had noticed how cold and empty the park seemed, and it had been one of the things that had unnerved him about the place. How could Danny like such a thing?

And Danny had said that when things were alive, there was responsibility, emotion, worry and fear attached to them. If a single flower, wilting, had been growing in the middle of the park, he would have felt obligated to water it every day. If a bird, maimed, had landed in the park, he would have fretted and worried over it until it got better. And if it died, he would have felt sad. These things were normal, it was human nature to care for other things… But sometimes, Danny said, he got tired of it all. He liked the park because here he could come and sit and forget. Here, he could forget his responsibilities, forget his obligations. Here, nothing existed, not the world, not his responsibilities, not his worries, not even him. And that, Danny said, was the ultimate freedom.

Tucker hadn't known what to say. In his heart he knew that Danny's logic was flawed. He just didn't know how to correct it.

"Tucker…"

"Huh, what?" Tucker looked up at Sam, suddenly remembering that she was there.

"You were spacing again, like in class." Sam had a disapproving look on her face and Tucker humoured her, putting a suggestive grin on his face.

"Well, you know, I was only imagining what that new exchange student from Iceland would have looked like in a bathing suit…" He wiggled his eyebrows.

Sam rolled her eyes. "Sometimes, Tucker, you're so shallow."

The smile began to feel forced on Tucker's face and he knew it was time for a topic change. "So, what were you saying about the museum?" He sat on one of the swings. It squealed in protest as he forced it to move.

"Oh yeah," Sam took a seat next to him. "See, I just have this feeling that there's more to whatever happened in the museum than meets the eye."

"Ok, but don't you think Danny would've told us if he thought something really important had happened in there? I mean, it's not like him to hide something so big from us. And if you think that this museum ghost, or whatever, is what _killed _Dash's cat… Then that's… pretty big…"

"Yeah, well, maybe he doesn't know that that's what's causing it. Danny's pretty slow on some things, he might just have not thought about it." Sam rolled her eyes upward as she wrapped her arms around the chains of the swing, hugging it.

"Now we're assuming there _is _a museum ghost." He pointed out.

"Well, what else could it be? All these weird things started happening since we went to the museum: Danny's behaviour, the disappearance of the ghosts, Willo, Dash's cat… That's more than just a coincidence, Tucker." She said matter-of-factly.

Tucker could not refute such logic. "…Ok… So what do we do?"

"Like I said, we should go to the museum."

"Yeah, but we can't just go there without a plan. We should do some research first… And in case you've forgotten, Danny's grounded, how're we gonna get him to come?"

"We go at night; his parents can't get mad if they never find out." Sam said as though it were obvious.

Sometimes Sam's ability to take great truancy and disobedience in stride amazed Tucker. Really, he knew she had issues with her parents and didn't really care what they'd do if she was caught sneaking out, but what about _him?_

Again, Sam's insight seemed to inform her of Tucker's thoughts and she grinned.

"Don't worry, Danny and I'll sneak you out, if you're afraid."

Tucker eyed her leerily.

"Ri-i-i-ight… That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

"Psh," Sam waved his concerns away. "Your parents haven't caught us yet, have they? We'll be fine."

_'Famous last words…'_ Tucker could help but think as Sam stood and they left the park, heading to her mansion, where they'd begin their research on the museum.

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Danny woke with a start. Sitting up straight in his bed and looking around with wide, hyper-alert eyes.

Another chill racked his form and he shivered, hugging his arms and hissing out a stream of blue air.

"_ 'M Goin' ghost._" He muttered, and two rings of white-blue light, one traveling up and the other down, turned him from human to ghost.

The blankets slid away from him as he rose into the air. Moving silently as death, Danny glided through the floor, turning intangible as he went.

Another shiver built up in his chest, but Danny had control over the feeling now and he easily suppressed it. Yes, definitely his ghost sense. Danny frowned. Now what was setting it off?

He sensed, more than saw, a whisper of movement in the room ahead of him, the kitchen. Feeling not unlike a hunter stalking its prey, he crouched down and entered the room.

What he saw there, made him shimmer back into existence with a shocked expression.

"Skulker?!"

"Ah, whelp, I was wondering if you'd wake up." The ghost hunter looked back at Danny with a—if Danny read it right—dour expression on his mechanical face.

"Skulker, what are you doing in my house?" Danny was feeling oddly calm, considering the fact that the ghost who wanted to tear off his hide and use it as a doormat had broken into his house and was standing mere meters away from him_._ And had probably just been watching him sleep.

Now that he thought of it, that last part did freak Danny out a bit.

"It was unintentional, I promise you." Skulker waved a large robotic hand at Danny in a dismissive gesture. "Now go away. I have decided not to hunt you today."

"Excuse me?!" Danny was taken aback, even a little offended.

"I have bigger game than you." Skulker mouth parted into a fearsome show of gleaming metal teeth. The hunter cocked a massive arm gun. "_Rare_ game."

"Rarer than a half human, half ghost hybrid?" Danny scoffed, raising an eyebrow.

Skulker levelled a distinctly condescending look on the young halfa. "Well with you, Masters and that little runt twin of yours, it seems like your kind is multiplying all over the place. No, I hunt only the best, and the rarest. And game like _this… _is sublime, my ultimate goal. I will sate my hunger on such a kill."

There was an odd glint in Skulker's glowing eyes as he said this and Danny couldn't help but wonder at the ghost's words. _'Ultimate g__oal? What ultimate goal?'_

Just then, something occurred to Danny and his eyes widened.

"This game that you're hunting… It wouldn't happen to be called…" Danny's throat closed and he had to force himself to say the name. "_Legion_… would it?"

Skulker's eyes snapped to Danny and narrowed. The hunter took on a guarded posture, raising his gun. "Where did you hear that name, whelp?"

"I-I… you…" Danny didn't want to divulge his knowledge. He struggled with the right way to phrase his sentence but ended up saying something completely different. "Is Legion the reason why all the ghosts are gone?"

Skulker looked taken aback and lowered his gun. "Noticed that, did you, punk?"

"It's kind of hard not to." Danny said wryly

"Yeah, well, Masters noticed it too. Your kind is all the same, so nosey." Danny refrained from commenting on the fact that Skulker was the one who stalked _him _on a regular basis. "This has nothing to do with you… Or Masters for that matter. This is a ghost matter. And you, you're not a real ghost anyway." There was disdain in Skulker's voice, but it was the words, not the tone that rubbed Danny the wrong way.

_**'He is but a pantomimic thief…'**_

_**'…a poor copy of our glorious kind…'**_

_**'…Halfa…'**_

Danny grit his teeth. "Shut up!" He cried to the air and when Skulker gave him an inquiring look, Danny scowled and turned away, folding his arms.

"I could beat you in a battle any day." Danny grumbled. Then he pointed a finger at Skulker. "So don't you go belittling me because I'm a halfa."

"Indeed," Skulker mused. "You have some skill. But nonetheless, you do not have the same… ethos… as a full ghost. We do not answer to the likes of you."

_'What the heck is **ethos**?'_

Danny was getting tired of all this round-a-bout talking. Since when did Skulker talk in riddles? "Either tell me what the heck you're talking about, and where all the ghosts have gone, in _normal _words, or I'll pummel it out of you." Danny, still floating spread his feet in mid-air and bent his knees, bringing his fists up in an offensive gesture.

Skulker grinned and pulled up his gun.

"Well, I was in need of some warming up. Come at me, ghost child."

And Danny obliged, leaping at Skulker with a loud battle cry. One hand was held in front of him, while the other was behind, powering up a ball of glowing green energy. Skulker dodged, but didn't move fast enough and Danny's hand gouged a deep dent in the hunter's shoulder armour.

"Hey, I just got that shined, whelp!" Skulker cried angrily.

"Oh, so sorry Skulky, here, let me make it better," and Danny leapt at Skulker again, this time gouging a hole in the opposite shoulder. He jumped back, and held his thumb up, squinted with one eye closed and regarded Skulker like he was a piece of art. "There, now you're even."

"Why you—!" Skulker yelled wordlessly as he jumped at the teen. But Danny was faster. He spun to the side, grabbing Skulker by one thick metal arm and spun around in a tight circle, letting the hunter go at the end of his turn, throwing him straight up into the air. Skulker turned intangible to avoid hitting the ceiling and sailed through it, the floor above and out the roof. Danny grinned, proud of himself for avoiding unnecessary damage to his house, and flew upward to join Skulker.

On the roof, Danny didn't see Skulker immediately and he turned a full 360 degrees, trying to spot the hunter. A flash in the corner of his eye was the only warning Danny had before a beam of light hit him directly, throwing him back several feet.

Danny tumbled through the air, but didn't fall. The blast wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. Recovering quickly, he spotting Skulker hovering in front of the huge FENTONWORKS sign on his house. The hulking metal ghost had his massive gun pointed in Danny's direction and it hummed as he prepared to fire.

Danny had no intention of being anywhere in the vicinity when Skulker finally fired that weapon.

Righting himself in the air, the teen sped away to the side in a zigzagging pattern before rising straight above Skulker and diving. Skulker snarled and raised his arm to deflect Danny, but was unprepared when the halfa, instead of punching the other ghost, brought the glowing ectoplasmic energy in his hand down like a sword, severing the gun in half.

Skulker's rage was palpable and the ghost's eyes turned from glowing green to deadly red. Danny was caught off guard by the ghost's sudden fury and couldn't quite manage to block the unexpected onslaught of punches and kicks the ghost rained on him. Skulker made it past Danny's feeble defense and nailed him hard in the chest with a violent kick. Danny dropped out of the sky and straight into the ground, creating a small crater where he landed.

Groaning, Danny blinked and looked up blearily into the air only to gasp and roll away as Skulker's fist rammed into the place where his head had been only second before. Scrambling to his feet Danny back peddled to avoid a laser, then ducked to avoid a blade thrown at his neck. Throwing out a hand, Danny deflected a kick, then threw a few ectoplasmic-charged punches of his own. Each punch made contact, but didn't seem to slow Skulker down in the slightest.

Danny jumped back to avoid another kick, but noticed how Skulker had hyperextended his limb, foolishly exposing his wire joints. The halfa could have easily reached out and chopped off Skulker's leg then, debilitating his mechanical suit long enough to extract the small ghost from the helmet. But something stopped him. Skulker wasn't acting normal. The hunter barely ever engaged him in direct hand-to-hand combat, usually preferring to set elaborate traps and wait for Danny to fall into them before doing anything.

Why was Skulker doing this?

Danny dodged yet another desperate punch and gazed into Skulker's blood red eyes.

Had Skulker gone mad?

"Why are you doing this Skulker? You never get this mad when I destroy one of your toys."

"You… You … blasted whelp! You ruined my chance, the only chance I had—!" Skulker paused and pinned Danny with a look of indescribable rage, clenching his hands into shaking fists at his sides.

"Your chance to do what?" Danny raised his hands, palm outward in a peaceful gesture. He had no idea why, but something was telling him to solve this in a way that was not violent. "You chance to beat Legion? Skulker, you told me that this guy is rarer than me, stronger than me. If your gun couldn't stand up to me, then how could you ever expect it to work against Legion?"

Skulker stumbled and his jaw went slack. His eyes flickered from red to green.

"Tell me, Skulker, why do you want to fight Legion?"

"He…" Skulker looked away. "He's rare game. I must fight the ultimate battle against the ultimate foe worthy of pursuit." The words sounded plastic and flat, like a well rehearsed speech.

"But _why,_ Skulker?" Danny was honestly curious. "Why do you have to be the ultimate ghost hunter? Why hunt at all? Why is it so important to you?"

"I-I…" Skulker faltered uncharacteristically. "You—" He looked up and wide, green eyes met Danny's own. "Why are you asking me this? Why do you care?"

"I—" Danny hesitated. "I… don't know." He said truthfully and shrugged. But then he grinned. "I guess I just want to know more about what motivates you. I mean, you've chased me around for a year demanding my pelt at the foot of your bed. I should at least have the right to ask you what made you this way, right?"

"You—" Skulker stumbled back in the air. "No one has ever… asked me… about my past before… Why?"

"Well…" Danny wasn't sure how to answer, and he paused, thinking hard. He wanted Skulker to stop hunting. He wanted to know why the ghost pursued his hunt so doggedly. He wanted…"I guess I just want... to help."

There was a spark, and ball of glowing white light formed between Danny and Skulker. The ball curled and twisted upon itself and spikes of radiant energy fanned out around it, cutting the air.

"What—?!" Skulker shied away from the light and Danny moved to protect his eyes with his arms. The move was futile though, as the light expanded outward, enveloping them both. Danny's vision filled with white.

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Profound silence pounded on Danny's eardrums and after a few moments he blinked, and up. The light was bright, but not painfully so. It reached as far as he could see and covered everything. He couldn't even see Skulker.

"…Uh… Skulker?" Danny called hesitantly into the white. "Hello? Can you hear me? Skulker? Anyone?"

_'Boy!'_

Danny jumped and spun around at the sound of the voice, but there was only white. He saw no one.

_'Boy! Come here!'_

_'Yes, Father!'_

Danny searched the area extensively, his head whipping back and forth, but there was no one. The first voice was older, more mature, while the second voice was of a young boy, probably no older than Danny, maybe younger.

_'Stand up straight, boy! Haven't the tutors taught you anything?'_

_'Sorry, Father.'_

_'... Now, what is this I've heard about you loosing your match today against the minister's son?'_

_'He was so much bigger than me, Father! There was no way I could—'_

_'SILENCE!'_

Danny flinched back at the harsh tone, as though the word had been directed at himself.

_'I will not stand for your petty excuses.'_

_'But Father—'_

_'Too many times you have shamed this family's honour with your cowardly behaviour. A proper man stands up and faces his fears head on! ...Get out of my sight. I can't even look at you right now.'_

_'…I… yes, Father.'_

The boy sounded so despondent, it tugged at Danny's heart. A few seconds of silence passed and somehow Danny knew the older man was no longer around.

_'I'll be better Father. Someday, I'm going to be the bravest, strongest, biggest fighter you've ever seen! And then you'll recognize me. Then you'll be proud to call me your son…'_

_

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Danny felt a sharp tug at his chest and suddenly he was falling. The white light dissipated around him and Danny found himself back in front of his house. His feet slammed into the ground hard and Danny's knees gave. He collapsed face down into the grass.

He put his hands underneath him, trying to push himself to his feet, but for some reason he had no energy. His arms shook and violent trembles racked his body. He only managed to raise himself a few inches off the ground before he had to stop, panting heavily. He was _tired_… Why?!

"You!"

Danny looked up to see Skulker looking at him with a wild, expression on his face. So many emotions were running through the ghost hunters eyes; but they were a mess, Danny couldn't read a single one.

"You—how did you…!?" Skulker looked completely unbalanced and had his thrusters activated, floating a few feet away from Danny. "You… are you? You couldn't be…" Suddenly, Skulker got a serious frown on his face and dropped down to the earth. He reached out and grabbed Danny by the collar. Danny tried to protest, but only managed a low whine as he was pulled bodily into the air.

Skulker held the halfa in front of his eyes and Danny grimaced as his toes barely brushed the ground. Seemingly satisfied with what he saw, Skulker dropped Danny who fell like a bag of sand into a heap at the hunter's feet.

"You're just so full of surprises, aren't you, ghost child?" Skulker raised an eyebrow at Danny's prone form and the teen gave him the best glare he could muster in such a vulnerable position. "Well, for giving me such a valuable piece of information, I will let you live. Today. Be grateful child, because you will not find much mercy from me in the future." And with that, Skulker fired up his rockets and blasted away into the sky.

Danny groaned, trying to move, but only ended up rolling over onto his chest again. He craned his neck, looking at the quickly disappearing speck in the sky that was Skulker.

"Blast'd ghost." He grumbled. "Didn't even learn 'nything usef'l... Wha's tha' ligh' 'nyway?" Danny's voice slurred with exhaustion and he gazed wistfully in the direction of his house, the front door was barely ten meters away. _'Great, now I got something **else** to worry about… **And** I'm gonna get into trouble for leaving the house. Could this day get any worse?'_

His vision blurred at the edges and blackened. Danny scowled, squinting his eyes, trying to keep his consciousness, but it was a lost cause. The two rings of energy enveloped him and he was human.

Danny's last conscious thought was that he really had to figure out what the word _ethos _meant.

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Fingers interlaced under a long, aquiline nose and pale, colourless eyes studied a flickering screen intently. A neat red bowtie was tied over a crisp, starched white shirt that gave way to a well-cut, expensive suit covering a thin frame. Legs were crossed, revealing polished black shoes and shoulder length, silvering hair was pulled back into a low ponytail.

The screen paused on a single image and the man leaned back in his chair, enjoying the soft crunch of pristine leather under his weight.

"Ah, Daniel." Vlad Masters crooned. "I leave you alone for a mere couple of weeks and see the trouble you've gotten yourself into."

The screen was paused on the prostrate figure of Danny Fenton, unconscious on his front lawn.

Vlad tsked, shaking his head, a small smile twisting the corner of his mouth. "Whatever am I going to do with you, my boy?"

"_Oh Vlad-love!_" A high, overly perky voice singed.

Vlad leaned his head back slightly and gazed over his shoulder at his holographic assistant, Maddie Fenton. "Yes, Maddie-dear?"

_"The manager from the Packers team called and said they know you stole their mascot's uniform and ask that you return Packy Pack Packer before they file a lawsuit on you suing for grand larceny."_

"Oh, Butternuts."

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_End Chapter 10_

_To Be Continued…_

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What do you think of my new dividers? FF. net deleted all my old ones so I had to go back and edit EVERY. BLASTED. CHAPTER. to fix the problem… So you like them… right? Right?!

Oh my... I do believe this chapter ended up being even LONGER than the last. I got many reviews stating that overall, you guys like long chapters, so here ya go! No horror in this chapter, I'm afraid, but now you've got a hint to the plot, can anyone guess where I'm going with this story?

**Shining Zephyr: **XD Yeah, not too quick on the update, sorry 'bout that, but I hope the length made up for it! I love putting details into my fic, but somehow it just makes everything so _long_ and sometimes I wonder if I make it a little _too_detailed, loosing some of the mystery or plotline :3 I'm glad though, that you think it's intriguing! I've never written suspense before, and it's a little awkward, so I'm happy you like it so far!

**pearl84: **Ha! Yes! I agree with you completely! Vlad is technically _supposed _to be difficult to write, and yet, I'm so happy he's finally entered my story! You wouldn't believe it, but after that long, long segment with Sam and Tucker, when I finally got to Danny and Vlad I was practically sighing with relief (now I just hope I got his character right XD). You know, it's odd but even though I know where I want this story to go, I STILL get writers block! I mean, it's ridiculous, I should have a 'get-out-of-writer's-block' free card because I've planned the story… but no! Of course not! (Then again, exams didn't exactly help my free time schedule though :3). You're right though, long chapters do seem to work better when you don't have the time to write (odd oxymoron init? XD). That dream which you described, the one in which you died… wow… that's creepy! I know what you mean about feeling pain though, I once had this dream in which I got a bee sting (of all things!) and when I woke up I could've sworn that I actually felt the prick on my arm… weird, huh? And also, I once had this dream in which I got shot, but I was still there… I was just a ghost… It was strange, but kind of cool at the same time because I could float through things and fly XD… Anyway, thanks for the long review, it completely made my day, and I hope you liked my Vlad (there wasn't much of him in this chapter, but he'll be quite important as the story moves on!).

**Nylah: **Hehe, you'll never complain about a long chapter? Not even this one? XD But yeah, I know, the dream was kinda long. In all honesty, I _had_ envisioned it as short… was _trying_ to make it short… and had _counted_ on it being short… And then I just kept getting all these new ideas on how to describe things, and new scenes I could put in…XP I basically sabotaged myself… garg… Oh well, every part of that dream was (and will be) important for the plot, so I'm glad you stuck through it all :3 I think I know what you mean about the 'waking dream' thing. I once had this weird thing where I was half asleep and half awake: I was lying on my bed and I couldn't move. I could see the bed and the blanket around me but I couldn't move my arms or legs I could just blink. It was terrible! Eventually, it wore off, but I can still remember how it felt o.O

**MutantLover09:** I never saw a thing (shifty eyes) nope! I never saw you with a bat with Dash's name on it, _never _happened XD. So! I'm glad you like long chapters, what did you think about this one? Longest one yet! Even I can't believe how long it turned out! So, you've finally realized how secretly nefarious the Box Ghost is? See? He doesn't even have to show up in my story and he's already a suspect (no really, he hasn't shown up yet! For him that _is _odd, isn't it? XP). I'm glad that you like the detail in this fic! This chapter definitely had PLENTY of detail in it (ohh, finally, I'm getting into their heads, (rubs hands together evilly), writing introspection is so much _fun_! XD). I've never read the book 'Salem's Lot' but sticking a dog on a spike sounds kinda… morbid, you think my hung cat was worse than _that_?... Um… thanks… I think… XD. Oh, and after a few (ok many) apologies and the promise of a new virus scan, my computer eventually forgave me for chucking it to the side XP… But yeah, it took some time, lol.

**Thunderstorm101: **Would you believe I simply forgot that Dash's cat was a dog? XD Eh, well, let's just pretend the dog was a cat… or that it was always a cat… or something (getting confused here o.O''). Anyway, hope you liked the chappie!

**Flashx11:** Glad you liked the length of the last chapter! Lots of length and content galore in this chapter too. Hope you liked!

**sciencefreak330: **Yay for awesome morbidness! And yeah, don't worry about not saying anything critical, I know exactly how the brain goes completely to mush after exams and things (it took me a week to start thinking normally after my exams! Actually probably even more, since I'm still prone to spouting random bits of chemistry information every time I see water boil XD. Thanks for the review!

**Soulcat56: **Hiya! Thanks for reviewin'! I'm glad you liked my random bits of humour in this fic! Humour seems to escape me or most occasions and it sometimes it just ends up more lame than funny, so it's good to know when my attempts sometime work XD

**Wishes for Wings: **Heya! Yeah I know, it's been _way _too long since I updated last. Sorry, I didn't mean for it to take so long, I've just been swamped in recent exams… and post-exam-brain-mush syndrome :D Tucker and Sam remind you of George and Elaine? Really? Well… excusing the age difference, I guess that's a good thing… I think… maybe ;P. That dream you described about your death and the eulogy thing sounded really… creepy, I guess you now know what people would say about you after you died o.O'… I've never had a dream like that… but I have had a dream in which I knew it was a dream (weird, huh?). And to prove it was a dream I ran and jumped off the balcony I was on and, somehow, managed to fly away (yeah, I have NO idea how that happened either, but it was so cool! I guess it's a good thing it WAS a dream, huh? XD). Hope you liked the chapter!

**Akia Starfrost:** Hello! Wow, it _has_ been awhile, hasn't it? I haven't heard from you since chapter 4! Thank you, though, very much for what you said. It's a huge compliment to hear that my writing has drawn you in emotionally! I've been trying to develop the characters in a realistic and believable way (like Danny's parents: Jack is just plain oblivious, he thinks Danny'll become strong if he is hard on him… But Maddie was hoping that by getting angry and punishing Danny, she'd get him to open up about what's going on in his life… too bad Danny's too closed mouthed for that ;P). You know, Mr. Lancer is also one of my favourite characters, so you can expect to see more of him in future chapters! And I'm glad you liked the dream, I hope you also liked this chapter.

**chalicity: **Hiya! Thank you so much for your reviews! Yup! Lots of weird and mysterious things going on in this fic, everything will be explained though, eventually! And Vlad has officially made his appearance, what did you think? That dream you had about Godzilla was so funny! I'm just imagining now everyone running around screaming their heads off, while just standing there all calm and thinking 'It's all a dream, people! C'mon!' You know, I once had this dream where I WAS able to make myself fly… but it was only for a very short amount of time and it never happened again after that…XD Anyway, super long chapter for you to enjoy, hope you liked it!

**blue-eyed-blond227:** Hey! Thanks for the review! Glad you liked the story so far and I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

**xheartkreuzx:**XD Loved your review, thanks!

**Deyinel: **Wow, interesting pen name, does it mean anything? Anyway, you really think this fic is one of the best? That's amazing to hear, especially with all the excellent Danny Phantom fics out there, thank you! I'm glad you like the way I portray Danny. I made him slightly different than the show, I think (maybe more sensitive? Or a little more thoughtful?) but I kinda like him this way, it makes him more… realistic (instead of just showing random traits whenever it's convenient, like in the show, when they want to teach a lesson on being humble, they make Danny all egotistical, which, to me, was very out of character for him). Anyway, thanks for the review and I'm sorry this chapter took so long to get out (BEWARE the evil exams of DOOM! XD), but I hope you enjoyed it!

**Adio!**


	11. Be Yourself

**Hiya!**

Righty, for those wondering what happened to me for the past two months, well, I've been away (still am, actually, ha). But for a while I didn't have access to the internet, which put a damper on the updating scheme. All I can say is that lapses like this will happen from time to time in my updating, just know that I will ALWAYS come back. I've got big plans for this story and am not going to abandon them anytime soon. Thanks for your patience guys!

**_Disclaimer:_** Danny Phantom, and all related characters do not belong to me. I do however own the plot, Legion, and various other minions that may or may not make an appearance. Do with that information as you will, but please do not steal.

Enjoy!

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**_The Soul Sepulcher_**

_-By Sholay_

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**_Chapter 11—_**_Be Yourself_

"Bye Cathy! Bye Sheliza! I'll see you guys tomorrow!" Jasmine Fenton waved goodbye to her friends then turned to walk down the school's parking lot to her car. As she broke away from her social circle and the comfort of human interaction, the amicable smile slid off her face.

Running a hand through her waist length hair, she pulled it back into a high ponytail before unlocking the door to her cherry red convertible. She laid one hand on the handle of the door then paused.

It was so typical of human behaviour, she thought with vexation, to act with such immaturity and callousness toward other people's feelings. Sure, everyone was all simpering and sympathetic to the victim, sending well wishes left, right and centre; but the second their back was turned people would spread vile rumours and gossip endlessly.

Jazz let out a sigh and opened the car door. The bitter feel of having to deal with countless self-absorbed people for too many hours on end was heavy and viscous on her mind, annoying her highly. Placing her heavy backpack carefully under the seat in the back—she didn't want any of her books to get accidentally scratched or banged up around the corners—Jazz slid into the driver's seat, tugging the edges of her knee length white and lavender patterned skirt after her. Methodically, she strapped on her seatbelt and checked her mirrors before starting the car and exiting the school.

Popularity was the dream of every high school student. Whether prep or jock, geek or goth, everyone had their own vision of their desired popularity. Some merely wished for a close-knit group of friends, to whom they could rant all their problems. Some wished to be admired from afar as a role model to others. And some… wished for it all: to be the veritable King of the school.

Jazz, as a proud high school sophomore, had already established her status in the social hierarchy. To a sophomore—stuck in the painful phase of being not quite on top of the ladder, like a senior, but desperate to avoid being grouped with the underlings, the juniors and freshman—it was critical to have absolutely no fraternization with the freshmen.

Odd then, that this year's freshmen would have hogged so much of the grapevine this year.

Jazz stopped at a red light. Some of her shorter hair had teased itself out from under her turquoise headband and she tucked it back idly.

Casper High was a pitiful school; Jazz knew. Filled with unmotivated students and weary teachers, the school had only one dubious claim to fame: its junior football team.

It was no secret that Dash was a good football player. Even Jazz—who had an underlying distaste for such an ultimately desultory sport—could acknowledge the freshman's talent. Just being allowed to play on the junior team was indicative enough of that; for him to have become star quarterback was even more impressive. The team had been doing extraordinarily well, especially this season, and with the championship game coming up in just a couple of weeks, they needed every one of their players prepped and fit for the game.

Naturally, it would not do for their star player to be failing history and math.

Nor would it do to have that same player suspended from the game for having started a fight on school campus.

Jazz, of course, being one of the only smart _and_ popular people in the school had been the natural choice to be Dash Baxter's private tutor.

Now, sure, she did volunteer tutoring after school; and sure, she found it fun. But did she _ask _to tutor the one boy who terrorized her little brother on a daily basis? Did she _like _the predatory looks Dash sent Danny whenever they were in the same room… that Danny usually had to flee the room, and the house, lest the jock decided on a whim to beat him up? Did she _like _the disgusting come-ons that Dash continuously dolled out?

No.

Did she have a choice in the matter?

No.

Not if she wanted to keep her painfully earned spot on the social ladder.

In high school, short of good grades, popularity was everything. If you were popular you were in the good graces of the teachers. You could get into any event, any club. You could get good references and even better marks. Jazz had once seen an honest, hard-working student turned down for a retest, regardless of his reason, just by the teacher's fancy—even though many jocks gotten had extensions or even exclusions from that very same teacher, because of an upcoming game.

Jazz had been young and idealistic when she'd entered high school. In junior high and elementary school, she had been popular merely because she was smart. Teachers liked her because she gave thoughtful answers and she had been encouraged to succeed.

In her first class of high school she had answered a single Math question right—x was equal to 67, even now she remembered—and for weeks she had been ostracized by the student population, called hurtful names like 'grade grubber' or 'teacher's pet'.

After that, Jazz had learned to keep her mouth shut during class and let her answers come out on paper. Participation was for the geeks, dweebs and nerds, so it seemed.

Another red light stopped her and Jazz put her arm across the open windowsill, leaning her head on her hand. Another car drove up next to her and stopped. Blaring music assaulted her ears and she looked over in mild disdain at the teens grinning talking and laughing raucously in the car.

Popularity had not come easy to Jazz.

She had had to fight for it, learning every ingress and egress of how these shallow, petty teens worked. She had made plastic friends, the kind to whom you could whine about boys or hard tests, but God forbid you actually needed them to do something for you. Jazz learned what to say and when to say it. She learned how to use her smarts to her advantage and was not proud of the many homework assignments she had completed for other students to become their friends.

That was something Danny didn't know. Jazz's lips quirked upward at the thought of her little brother. Poor, little, innocent Danny thought he knew so much about the world, yet knew nothing about the way people worked and what truly did make the Earth turn on its axis.

He thought she was a steady, upstanding person who followed her ideals to a fault, never faltering…

Indeed, that was the impression she strove to give him.

As the older sister, Jazz wanted to set a good example for Danny; and what would he say if he knew she'd spent much of her freshman year doing six different sets of homework just to further her popularity?

He would be disappointed.

_'Ah, Danny. You think the world is so simple that if you always do what your heart tells you, you'll succeed.'_

Jazz drummed her fingers on the side of the car. Danny always did what he thought was the right thing. Always. It was admirable, Jazz thought, to have the courage to be so consistent in one's beliefs. In a way Jazz never wanted Danny to change, but in another, she knew that the world would waste no time in destroying someone as soft-hearted as him.

It was one of the reasons why she'd become so close to Danny, why she was thinking about attending community college in Amity Park, come two years. She needed to be around for Danny, protect him from the things which sought to ruin such honest, pure goodness.

Popularity was one of those things. It had a way of warping the mind: changing priorities and skewing right and wrong.

Take yesterday for instance.

The news of Danny and Dash's fight had spread all over the school, spanning even the gaps between the grades. Jazz had been more than a little surprised when even some seniors had come up to her asking 'Hey, was that _your _brother who beat up Dash Baxter yesterday?'

In the span of one day, Danny had earned himself a bad-boy reputation many teens spent years trying to achieve—shooting him sky high into the social hierarchy. Everyone wanted to know who he was, how he learned to fight; was he on any school teams, how old he was… and—to Jazz's mortification—if he had a girlfriend.

Jazz wondered how Danny would take the irony. For so long he had desired popularity, now he'd gotten it in the one way he never would've wanted it.

Then there was the incident with Dash's cat.

All of a sudden the rumours had grown malicious. In front of Dash, everyone was all apologetic faces and condolences. But in the background, suddenly everyone was leaning over to gossip, as though there were some delicious secret to tell.

_'Hey, you heard about that fight yesterday right?'_

_'Yeah, yeah! I heard that one guy took on Dash Baxter all on his own and won!'_

_'What was his name?'_

_'His name?'_

_'Daniel? Damon?'_

_'Danny, Danny Fenton!'_

_'Danny Fenton? As in… Jazz Fenton?'_

_'Yeah, he's her younger brother. He's a freshman.'_

_'Ooh, a freshman huh?'_

_'I hear he's kind of cute, actually.'_

_'Yeah, yeah, but what about that cat, you think he did it?'_

_'Well, I hear that Danny has all **sorts **of behavioural problems: gets into trouble with his teachers ALL the time.'_

_'I hear he hated his chem labs, so he'd break all the glassware.'_

_'I hear he skips class and no one knows **where **he goes!'_

_'Really? You think he does drugs or something?'_

_'Naw, he doesn't look like no junkie. Didn't you see that right hook he laid on Dash? And that kick? I bet half our boxing team couldn't move that fast, let alone some burnout freak.'_

_'And he's not on any school teams?'_

_'No, I don't think so.'_

_'No?'_

_'Wow. So what is he?'_

_'I dunno, never heard of him before yesterday.'_

_'Huh, maybe he's part of some weird, street fighting gang or something.'_

_'Or maybe he has a girlfriend in college!'_

_'What does that have to do with anything?'_

_'Hah ha. So you think he did it then: hang Dash's cat huh?'_

_'Of course!'_

_'That's… hard core, man.'_

It was unbelievable! Just short of outright condoning the hanging of Dash's cat, the students were practically acting like nothing was wrong with it. If anything, Danny had become even _more _popular!

Jazz was so upset at having to reiterate over and over that Danny did **not**—could **not**—have hung Dash's cat that when the _police _had come and asked her about it she'd…

…She'd lied.

Jazz narrowed her eyes, watching the street passing in front of her with a dark frown.

She'd told the police that she had seen Danny asleep during the time when Dash's cat had been killed.

Btu the only time she'd checked on Danny was when she'd woken him up… several hours _after_ the estimated time of death.

Jazz pulled into the FentonWorks driveway and parked the car. She sat there then, just thinking. After a few moments she shook her head. It didn't matter. It didn't matter! So what if she hadn't actually _seen _Danny in bed. She knew he was in bed; the only time he woke up in the middle of the night was to chase a ghost, and there hadn't been any ghosts around for weeks. So Danny had been in bed. And that was that.

Besides, it was inconceivable that Danny could have done such a thing. The possibility never even registered in her mind.

With this resolved, Jazz nodded to herself and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Jingling the metal against the shiny cherry ornament on the chain, she placed them in her pocket before exiting the car. Then, reaching into the back of the car, she carefully extracted her backpack from under the seat.

Whistling a nameless tune, she made her way up the driveway, mindful of her new high heeled shoes and avoiding the grass. At the foot of the threshold she paused, something odd catching her attention. The whistle died away on her lips.

Around the corner of the house, a huge hole was gouged into the Earth. From the angled she'd walked up, it had been invisible. But now she could clearly see the amount of damage done to the lawn: a ragged chuck of the ground had been pulverized, matting down grass and soil into a shallow semicircle that stretched several feet. Jazz sucked on her teeth, a twinge of unease prickling at her mind. There had been a fight here; what happened? Was it a ghost—was Danny okay? Gnawing at her lower lip in worry, her eyes trailed the ground, searching for any clue to what had happened.

Her breath caught suddenly as her eyes spotted a figure prone on the ground. Though nearly hidden among the long grass and weeds, there was absolutely no mistaking that mop of dark, messy hair.

The book bag fell to the ground with a loud thump, forgotten, as Jazz ran with frenzied abandon through the grass.

"DANNY!"

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Danny groaned lowly as he came back to consciousness with the feeling of a hundred bricks being dumped on his head.

With a grimace of pain, he pressed both heels of his hands into the bone above the hollows of his eyes and rubbed. He squeezed his eyes closed, then let out a breath of air and tried to open them.

The world spun in violent, nauseating circles and Danny recoiled with a sharp wince, shutting his eyes quickly. The awful spinning sensation continued, even behind his closed eyes and another deep groan made its way up his throat.

"Danny, Danny! You're awake!"

Danny grit his teeth as Jazz's voice pierced straight through his eardrums into his skull—and his hands shifted to cover his ears. There was a soft wall on his side and instinctively, Danny rolled to press his back into it and pulling his knees to his chest. A small whine escaped between his teeth.

Again the urge to vomit hit him, but his stomach muscles had no strength and could only contract in weak bursts.

Danny forced himself to swallow. Then, with painstaking slowness, uncurled himself—taking long deep breaths as he did.

A few minutes of silence passed—Jazz must have realized that making noise was bad right now—while Danny just lay there, his eyes closed, breathing slowly. Finally, the nausea passed and he chanced opening his eyes slowly.

The light in the room was mild: no artificial lights were turned on, which made Danny grateful. The room spun for a second but, though Danny squinted, he resolutely kept his eyes open until the dizziness faded. He was in the family room, he saw. Jazz must have been worried sick, to have risked the possibility of their parents coming home and seeing him unconscious. Usually when this sort of thing happened, Sam, Tucker or Jazz would carry him to his room. He wasn't that heavy, he knew, but for Jazz to have forgone secrecy for expediency… how bad did he look?

_'…Wait… what happened again?... Oh yeah, Skulker, the fight, that light and those voices… Huhn… Weird. I didn't get hit all that hard. Why'd I collapse?'_

By now, Danny had managed to orient himself into a sitting position. He could feel Jazz's presence hovering over him, but though she reached out—prepared to catch him should he fall—she did not touch him, for fear of aggravating some unseen wound. Still squinting, Danny pulled his eyes open to the point where he could see Jazz. She gave him a silent, questioning look. He nodded before letting his head hang with a sigh, bangs falling over his eyes. Strength was slowly returning to his limbs and his arms tensed at his sides, fingers curling around the seat of his chair on both sides of his legs.

"Danny…" Jazz's voice was low and soft; apparently she was still worried about irritating his ears. "What happened?"

"First…" Danny's voice was even quieter than Jazz's and she had to lean closer to hear him. "Tell me. Why'm I in the family room?"

Jazz understood, but didn't answer immediately. Danny looked up at her, watching her expression curiously. She seemed agitated. "Danny," she fiddled with her fingers. "You weren't breathing."

A beat passed.

"Oh…" Danny's voice was so low the word was nearly a puff of air. _'That is pretty bad.'_

"I was so worried!" Jazz suddenly burst out. Speaking quickly, her voice got high and jerky, like it usually did whenever she was greatly unsettled by something. "I thought—I thought… I don't know what I thought! I just brought you in here as fast as I could. Then I couldn't decide what to do, I checked your pulse, it was there but really slow… But I don't even know if that's normal! I didn't know what to do! I was thinking if I should give you mouth-to-mouth, but what if I did it wrong? I was gonna call 911, but what could they do? I was gonna call Sam and Tucker… but… but…" Jazz took a deep shuddering breath. Danny was going to tell her to stop, that she needn't continue, but she started talking before he could say anything. "Just as I was about to call the hospital you took this big gulp of air… like a diver coming out of the water or something.

"I was so glad." Jazz's head rose and Danny was taken aback when she looked at him with wide, shimmering eyes. "So glad when you took that breath. A couple of minutes after that you woke up, but… but… for those few seconds, I thought… I thought…" Her voice failed her and Jazz bit her lip, lowering her eyes.

"Hey… _Hey…_" Danny said, ducking his head to catch her eyes. When he did, he brought his head up, bringing her gaze with him. "I'm okay. I'm okay, really!" His strength was returning now, enough for him to give her a reassuring grin, which seems to relax her. "I'm just a little bruised, 's all. I guess all those weeks of no ghost hunting has really made me soft, huh?" Danny let out a small chuckle, but Jazz didn't join in. "Hey, look, I'm alright, okay? It'll take more than some old, recycled, tin can stalker to take me down. Besides, think about it this way, if I look _this _bad, imagine how the _other _guy looks, huh, huh?" Danny gave her an encouraging look, spreading his arms wide.

He was rewarded with a small, watery smile. "So that's all then? Just a regular ghost fight?"

"A regular as it can be, fighting a guy who wants your pelt at the foot of his bed." Danny smiled. It wasn't a lie. Besides, the whole truth right now would only hurt her more, and he didn't want that.

Jazz wrinkled her nose. "You mean that nasty Ghost-X still hasn't given up yet?"

"Skulker, Jazz. Skulker." Danny gave a mock, dramatic sigh. "Will you never get it right?"

" 'What's in a name?' " She grinned while Danny rolled his eyes. Of course, only his sister could be perked up by quoting Shakespeare. "Besides, how do you know it's not _me _who's been right all this time? Maybe _you're _the one who's got it wrong."

Danny put a speculative finger to his chin. "Oh, I don't know whatever gave me the idea his name was Skulker… hm, maybe it was the fact that he _told me?!_"

"But his name couldn't have ALWAYS been Skulker, right?" Jazz reasoned.

"Huh?" Danny frowned.

"Well, he was alive once, right? So he couldn't have _always _been called Skulker. I mean, bad names are one thing, but no parent would curse their child with an awful name like _Skulker_. Right?"

"… I guess…" Danny was thoughtful, soaking this new perceptive in. "You're right."

"Oh when will you learn, little brother?" Jazz sniffed then, leftover residue of having gotten so close to tears. Danny shot her a concerned look, but she didn't see it as she rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes. "I'm always right." Jazz then looked up straight into Danny's eyes and struck by the sudden fierceness of her expression he leaned back into the couch. "And if you EVER, and I mean _EVER, _scare me like that again, I will make SURE you regret it for the rest of your life!"

"Uh…" Danny raised a finger, prepping for a smart comeback.

"THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!" She reiterated and Danny's finger curled back in, not daring to make any comment.

"And that's a promise." Jazz smirked then and poked her index finger into Danny's chest. "And remember, I'm always right."

"Riiiight…" Danny eyed his sister warily, rubbing at the spot she'd prodded. "Next time I fall unconscious, I'll make sure to do it on the _other _side of town…" His comment trailed off miserably at the look Jazz was giving him and he effused a nervous chuckle.

"Eh heh he heh… Eh heh… Just joking?" He grinned and raised his hands in a surrendering motion.

"You'd better be." Jazz stood. She looked down at Danny and he stared up at her. "Are you sure you're ok?"

"Yup, yup. It's always weird waking up, but once you get over that it's ok, y'know?" Danny looked himself over, then flexed his hands into fists. Indeed, he was almost back to normal—it was like nothing had ever happened.

"I can't say I do know, actually." Jazz was giving him an enigmatic stare which Danny recognized as her _'I'm going to psychoanalyze you'_ look, so he quickly searched for another topic.

"Hey, um… I guess, from the lack of yelling and random explosions that Mom and Dad haven't come back yet?" He raised an eyebrow.

Jazz shook her head, an annoyed look crossing her face. "No, they're out acting as unofficial 'council' to the police." She put sarcastic air quotes around the word 'council'. "See, the police basically want Mom and Dad to admit that there's nothing ghostly about the weird things that have been going on recently. They don't want any official help because they want to hog all the glory to themselves." Jazz pulled her lips to one side, making a displeased face. "But Mom and Dad being… well, _Mom and Dad,_ obviously had some wordsto say about that."

"Obviously," Danny echoed, wondering where this was going.

"So, in the end, Mom and Dad agreed that the vandalism couldn't have been caused by ghosts… albeit grudgingly. The only reason they did so was because it was physically… or metaphysically, impossible for a ghost to have sneaked by their sensors and traps… even if they'd had extended knowledge of the devices, there were still some places that nothing but a human could have gotten through."

"Right…" Danny nodded. "So the police are happy so far. Then what? What about the incident with Dash's cat at Casper High?"

"Oh…" Jazz suddenly sent Danny a sly look and he realized his verbal _faux pas_. "_Someone_ snuck out of their grounding and went to school, didn't they?"

"I didn't say that!" Danny burst out in defense. "I… I heard about it on TV…"

"Uh huh…" Jazz gave an evil little grin. "Little brother, I know you too well."

"Aww… c'mon Jazz! You're not gonna tell!" Danny abandoned his weak defense and fell into pitiful begging. "Please? They never said what happened on the news and I just had to see if you, Sam and Tucker were ok. I had to come and check! Sam and Tucker told me what happened and I came right back, honestly! You _can't _tell Mom and Dad that I snuck out!"

"Hmmmm…" Jazz hummed thoughtfully and Danny put on the best pitiful look he could manage. It didn't take his sister long to cave. "Ok, ok, fine." She grinned easily. "I keep enough secrets for you already, so one more shouldn't be so hard."

Somehow, this last, simple sentence seemed to strike Danny. He leaned back with a startled look.

_'I keep enough secrets for you already.__' _Her words echoed in his head, washing him in a surge of guilt. Danny looked down. It was _his_ secret, his damnable _secret _that had turned his friends, and his own sister—Jazz, the one who never hid anything—into liars. He'd turned them all into liars, just for his own benefit.

Jazz seemed to sense Danny's drop in mood; she looked at him for a long moment before suddenly speaking up loudly, as though trying to shock him out of his dark thoughts. "Well, anyway! Mom and Dad refused to say that the cat's hanging wasn't ghost-related."

This caught the halfa's attention and he looked back up. "Why?"

Jazz, happy she'd distracted her brother, threw herself into the explanation. "Well, first, the police managed to close off the area before many students could trample over it. Then, they found no evidence of the cat having been lured or carried to the school. There's also no evidence of anyone having arrived or left in the specific time frame. No footprints around the pole, no car tracks, nothing. So really, it appears as though the cat just appeared there tied to the flagpole from thin air. Next, there were no fingerprints on the rope or the pole."

"The guy coulda worn gloves." Danny pointed out.

"Yes, but, even gloves leave behind some imprint. The pole was grimy, so was the rope. Any area used to hang the cat would have been smudged or wiped clean by the gloves. Gloves leave behind marks; they're just too indefinite to lift a fingerprint off of."

"Sooo…" Danny drew the word out, knowing his sister would finish the sentence for him.

"So! Only a ghost would leave such obvious evidence that is completely lacking any obvious evidence! Don't you see?"

"…Actually, I do. Which makes me wonder if I've been spending too much time with you recently." Danny sent Jazz a cheeky grin.

She huffed. "Well! I'll remember that the next time you ask me for help on your English assignments!"

"Oh Jazz! That hurts!" Danny fell back, clutching at his heart. "Surely you wouldn't leave your poor, little, defenseless brother to the face the violent, scary evils of the Capulets and Montagues all on his lonesome, would you?"

"HA!" Jazz let out a bark of laughter. "You? Defenseless? Hah ha. Little? Yes. Innocent? Yes. Gullible? Most certainly. But the one thing you are NOT is defenseless."

"Err… thanks?" Danny sounded bemused. "That _was _a compliment… right?"

Jazz just grinned. "At any rate," She said at length. "Mom and Dad have basically decided to start their own investigation and will probably be out late trying to find the ghost that hung Dash's cat."

"Oh… Okay…How do you know this anyway?" Danny raised an eyebrow.

"They left a message on the answering machine; I heard it record while you were out on the couch." Jazz answered.

"Ah…" Danny said. "I see."

The conversation seemed to dwindle from there. There was nothing else to say on the subject and Jazz fidgeted after a few seconds, wondering if she should leave.

Danny though, looked lost in thought, as though he were trying to decide something. Finally, Danny spoke up. "Hey Jazz…" He said slowly. "What… does… the word…_ 'ethos' _mean?" He spoke very hesitantly, seemingly unsure of whether he should be asking her this or not.

Jazz raised an eyebrow, looking down at Danny still seated on the couch. "Huh? Why? Where did you come across that word?"

"It… was something I heard someone say recently." Danny waved the question away. "It's not important. What does it mean?"

"Well, what was the sentence it was in? The context sometimes changes the definition." Jazz probed.

"I don't remember, isn't there some general definition or something?" Danny raised his eyebrows.

"Well… _generally_, I guess… and this is a very vague definition…" Jazz was clearly disgruntled with the lack of precision she was being forced to give. "But basically it means a socially acceptable way of thinking."

"Huh?" Danny looked baffled, "That doesn't make any sense."

Jazz let out an irritated puff of air through her nose. "Well, clearly you have a specific context in mind. If you just _told _me where you heard that word it would—"

"No, no…" Danny recanted. "Your definition was fine, I just don't understand. Just, can you give me an example or something?"

Jazz gave her brother a suspicious glance; she'd thought her definition had been pretty easy to understand. Nonetheless, she searched her mind for an example. "Ok, well, you know about the Salem witch trials, right?"

For some reason Danny gave a sharp shudder at this, rubbing his hands over his arms in a quick motion. "Yeah… _yeah, _I know them." He said it like he knew them personally, Jazz filed it away as something to ask him about later.

"Well, during that time it was seen as right and just to burn witches at the stake. It was the belief of the community that this was God's will. So one could say that it was old Salem ethos to burn witches at the stake." Jazz thought her sentence over in her mind as she said it. Yes, it seemed correct.

"Ok…" Danny appeared to be thinking hard. "So… ethos is like a normal behaviour pattern among a specific group of people."

"More like the specific customs and spirit which make the group act in certain ways," Jazz corrected. "But essentially, yes."

"I see." Danny was clearly trying to figure something out in his head.

"Hey, Danny," Jazz figured she should just ask. "How do you know about the Salem witch trials anyway?"

"Oh, that. Well, it's a funny story actually, heh he…" Danny grinned in a way that did not reassure Jazz one bit.

"Go on." She crossed her arms.

"Ah well, Sam, Tucker and I found this map which would take us anywhere in the ghost zone and we used it to find a time portal." Danny said quickly, preparing himself for the inevitable explosion. He wasn't disappointed.

"You WHAT?! Danny, how many times do I have to tell you! You _don't use strange, ghostly items_. **Especially** if you don't know where they're from and **_especially _**if you don't know _how they work!_"

"Well a friend gave it—ok fine, we kinda took it—by accident!" He raised a hand, looking like he was telling the truth… but Jazz was skeptical: she didn't know how someone could _accidentally _take something. "… And we were just going to have a little fun. I was going to return it as soon as we checked out a little of the Ghost Zone!"

"This was _your _brilliant plan, wasn't it?" Jazz was not amused. Only Danny would come up with something that was so obviously going to fail horribly.

"Hey… Well, it was not big deal. We ended up in 17th century Salem…"

"Oh you _didn't _Danny." Jazz groaned, rubbing a hand over one eye.

"Yeah, well, we all got out ok in the end so it was fine!" Danny insisted.

"Please tell me none of you got branded as a witch." Jazz said lowly.

"Er… well…" Danny paused.

"Who?"

"Sam."

"What happened?" When Danny didn't answer right away, Jazz asked again. "What _happened_, Danny?" Her tone left no room for argument.

"Ah… She was going to be burned at the stake when Vlad—"

"VLAD?!"

"Yeah, he'd kinda bugged the house and knew where we were. So he followed—"

"VLAD BUGGED THE HOUSE?!" Jazz's head shot up as she yelled incredulously. "WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS ALREADY?! WHAT ROOMS DID HE BUG? WHEN? HOW LONG HAS HE BEEN WATCHING US?!"

"Oh don't worry," Danny waved a hand at Jazz to calm down. "He bugged the lab and a couple of other rooms, but not yours… or Mom and Dad's." He laughed here. "He probably couldn't stand seeing them together. Hah. Besides I found all the cameras and destroyed them, so no worries."

But Jazz didn't fail to notice that Danny hadn't mentioned his own room. She opened her mouth to ask, but then decided she'd rather not know. Besides, if Danny had destroyed all the cameras it didn't matter anyway.

At least she hoped it didn't. Jazz shivered. Vlad Masters was a lunatic.

"Go back to your story then." Jazz urged. When Danny looked confused, she explained. "You were saying about Sam nearly… _burning_… at the stake and Vlad appearing, what happened then?"

"Ah… you won't let it go, will ya?" Danny gave his older sister a sheepish grin and she snorted.

"Not that easily." She said.

"Well, Vlad basically said I was an evil spirit, set the villagers against us, grabbed the map and flew off into the portal. Then this 1600's version of Dad popped out of nowhere—"

"Dad?" Jazz's lips quirked at the corner. "You're not serious."

"Oh I **_am_**." Danny nodded vigorously, looking at Jazz with wide eyes. " 'John Fenton Nightingale, Salem's Greatest Witchwacker!' " Danny intoned passionately, shaking a fist in the air and doing a fairly good job of imitating their father. "Complete with orange trench coat and all!"

Jazz couldn't help the small giggle that escaped her. She covered her mouth, sitting back down on the couch. "Oh my, so he looked exactly like Dad?"

Danny nodded again. "Except the long wavy hair, he was a carbon copy of Dad."

"So what happened then?" Jazz was getting into the story, she always liked hearing about her little brother's adventures, it was like reading a storybook, so out-there and fantastical.

"Well, he had these Blood Blossom thingies with him and sprinkled them around Sam…"

"Blood Blossoms? Not the ancient anti-ghost remedy? Like the modern day Specter Deflector?" Jazz's eagerness gave way to worry. "Were you ok?"

"Yeah, yeah." Danny grinned easily. "I couldn't touch them, but Tucker came and saved the day by eating up all the flowers. It was like, the first vegetable he'd _ever _eaten." He laughed. "I grabbed Sam and Tucker and we escaped after that, eventually tracking down Vlad and getting back the map."

"You returned the map then." Jazz gave Danny a look.

"Yes,_ Mother_," Danny rolled his eyes. "I gave the map back."

"Good." Jazz nodded. "And—"

"And I'll never use any questionable or remotely fun-looking ghostly objects again." Danny recited with his eyes closed, already knowing what Jazz was going to ask. Then he looked at his sister and smirked."At least, not without checking with Mrs. Worrywart here first."

"Hey, that's _Ms. _Worrywart, thank you very much." Jazz pointed a finger at Danny.

Danny laughed. "So, she admits!"

"You better believe it! And I'm proud of it too!"

* * *

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* * *

_Much later that evening..._

Danny wandered restlessly through the house in ghost form. Already invisible to the naked eye, he didn't bother with intangibility. He knew each sensor and trap in the house so well he was able to avoid each one with ease, even in his preoccupied state of mind.

He'd had another nightmare.

It had started out in a dark place, so dark it was suffocating. His senses had been cut off completely: he couldn't see, he couldn't hear, nothing. Then he'd stumbled across this odd ridge in the ground and found a hidden trapdoor. Passed the door was a fiery pit which had seemed irresistibly inviting. Danny had jumped in, but as soon as he did, the fire roared to life around him and swallowed him whole.

That was when Danny had woken up.

Danny glided into the kitchen, passing the dinner table and moving on to the family room.

He had the vague feeling of déjà vu. As though he'd seen and experienced that very same dream before… No, not the very same… but similar. But it was like grasping air, it was there right in front of his face, but he couldn't get a hold on it. He just couldn't remember clearly what had happened in the first dream. It was unsettling.

After waking up, Danny had been startled into a sense of false-awareness that left him feeling bone-weary and sluggish. He couldn't get back to sleep, nor could he just lie in his bed doing nothing, so instead he was wandering around the house like a zombie, trying to get his thoughts in order.

Sam and Tucker had called the house earlier. Since his parents hadn't been home, he'd taken the call—in spite of his grounding—telling Jazz he'd only be a couple of minutes.

Danny wished he'd just stuck to his parent's rules.

Sam and Tucker had told him their plan. A plan they had created and designed, _without him, _and only thought it prudent to _tell _him his rather _large _role in the entire thing after they'd decided the entire thing between themselves.

The first objective, they'd said, was to figure out what killed Dash's cat… _fine, fine, Danny could agree with this_. Next, conduct research… _'On what?' had been Danny's unasked question_. Then, sneak out… _but he was grounded_. At night, of course… _easier said than done_. Then go back to the museum… and that was all Danny heard.

A resolute 'No' had passed his lips before Sam had even completed her sentence. A dead silence had come after that.

What followed had been an ugly battle of wills between Danny and Sam, Tucker staying more or less out of it. It was not often that Danny and Sam fought… The raven-haired boy usually conceded to her reasonable views without much argument. But when Danny dug his feet in, he went deep; and the resulting fight had been long and painful.

Prideful and stubborn, Sam had taken Danny's refusal as a personal shot at her own idea, launching into a defensive repost of bringing up his own old, hackneyed plans and how she had followed then without question. Was he beating down her plan because he didn't trust her?

Equally stubborn and hypersensitive, Danny had returned with an inflamed remark about their lack of support and obvious disinterest in his opinion. Did they really care about his input, or was he just the muscle in their little plan?

The conversation had taken a frightening, deteriorative turn after that, leading to Sam eventually hanging up in a spiteful rage.

Danny had been in a foul mood after that, retreating permanently to his room and skipping dinner completely. A persistent flicker of sickly yellow in the corner of his vision had been his constant companion since the mention of the museum and it was maddening. A splitting headache had formed during the fight and with a scowl, Danny had thrown himself onto his bed, burying his head in the pillows and pressing against his temples with his hands. The yellow in his vision faded, at least, when he closed his eyes.

After many minutes of just lying there—stewing in his rage—guilt began to creep into Danny's consciousness.

Why had he gotten so mad? He never got so upset that easily…

It _had _been a good idea, to go back to the museum. And it was normal—smart, even—of Sam to have come up with the potential connection between the museum and the incidents around town.

Worse and worse… The guilt came in heavy waves now and Danny grimaced in shame. He had been so caught up in his petty anger that he never even told Sam and Tucker the real reason why he didn't want them… _especially_ not Sam and Tucker… to go back to the museum.

It was dangerous. Horribly dangerous.

And it scared him.

_Scared! Him? _Such a selfish emotion should not rule him like this! What sort of a hero cowers in a corner when the bad guy brings out a scary mask? Sam and Tucker were never scared… at least it never seemed like they were scared…

**_'But they've always had _**_you **to hide behind…'**_

He had gotten angry, sidetracked and _angry_. Sam was not one to forgive and forget overnight. She would be upset with him for days.

_What had he done?_

Danny paused in the middle of his aimless stroll. Even now, thinking about the argument made him feel sick. He was an awful person: selfish, insecure, petty.

After the argument—when reason had returned to Danny as he sat in his darkened room—Danny had immediately wanted to fly off to Sam's house and apologize for his insensitive words. If he hadn't known for certain that Sam equated speedy apologies with insincerity, Danny would have said he was sorry long ago. Instead, he had lain listlessly in his bed for hours until passing into an uneasy, fitful sleep.

Then he'd had that dream.

Passing the family room couch in another round of his pacing, Danny ambled over to the couch and dropped onto it like a sack of flour. Still invisible, he placed his elbows on his knees and interlaced his fingers under his nose, staring blankly at nothing.

He'd probably had that dream as a cruel karmic kick for his failure to curb his recent boughts of anger.

This rage: it was not normal. Usually he had at least some control over his temper, but now he was flying off the handle at the slightest of things—it had happened a few times now: with Dash as well as Sam and Tucker. Friend or foe, no one was safe from Danny's uncontrollable ire.

Danny's gloved hands clenched around each other.

He would not allow this to continue. He _had_ to control his anger, He _would_ do it. Even if it meant staying silent. Even if it meant agreeing to things he wouldn't normally agree with. Keeping Sam and Tucker happy was a priority; he did not want to hurt them with his thoughtless words. If he wanted to do something they didn't agree with, he could always do it while in his own company. If he didn't agree with something they were saying… well, he was entitled to his own opinion. That didn't mean he always had to verbally _express _that opinion.

It would work out better for everyone if Danny just took a step back and shaped his words to Sam and Tucker's expectations.

And yes, Danny knew this was not the way one should go about a friendship—goodness knows he'd seen enough of those 'be yourself' teen movies—but he did not live in the idealistic, perfect world of a scripted movie: where the guy always gets the girl and the hero always defeats the bad guy. This was _real life, _and in Danny's life, his anger was dangerous. His self-control was the only thing standing between him and the monsters he fought every day. If he could not control himself while with his _best friends, _then what would happen when he faced his enemies?

Danny did not dare finish that thought.

_'There is no need to. I will never let it get that far.'_

With that decided, the next question was:

How should he apologize to Sam?

He hated it when she was angry. There had to be a way to make her feel better. But after having had two arguments with her in just as many days, Danny was already on thin ice with his best friend. The delivery of this apology was absolutely critical. He had to do it in a way that would she would not only forgive him, but abandon this silly idea of hers to go to the museum.

… After several minutes of thinking Danny still couldn't think of a way he could get Sam to forget about going to the museum without getting into another argument with her.

Danny wondered, briefly, if he should just suck it up, say he was sorry, and go along with her plan.

**_'Why do you always have to be the one who apologizes?'_**

This thought paused Danny for a moment. _Why was **he **always the one who apologized? _Why not Sam, or Tucker?

Danny rose from the couch and moved to the window. Brushing aside the curtains with one hand, he gazed out into the twilit night. The sun was rising; the stars were gone. Soon it would be morning.

Danny apologized because he couldn't stand arguments or misunderstandings.

He hated the mental strain it took to sustain an ongoing argument. It drained him and always left a constant, painful, constricted feeling in his chest.

Usually, after a night's sleep, the memory of an argument would become inconsequential and fuzzy to Danny. _Yes, they'd fought, but today was a new day and they could go on with their lives._ It took an actual conscious effort for Danny to keep an argument in the forefront of his mind; otherwise he was likely to forget about the entire thing. He'dgo and make oblivious mistakes like trying to start idle conversations with Sam and Tucker while they were still mad at him.

**_'Why don't _**_they **ever apologize?'**_

Danny assumed that it was because he always broke first. After an argument, Tucker had the tendency to withdraw into himself for an unlimited amount of time: neither talking to the outside world or interacting in it. It was like he was replaced by a lifeless dummy that had its head attached with superglue to the screen of its PDA.

Sam though had a more direct approach. She had the formidable ability to remember every detail of not only last night's argument, but an argument they'd had three years ago on a similar issue. Sam used old memories to bring back old, festered feelings of hurt and anger and used them against Danny until he would either admit he was wrong or get angry himself.

Sometimes Danny wished he had the ability to remember things like that. He had a tendency to let things slip in one ear, then straight out the other. He couldn't retain things like Sam and sometimes that made him feel at a disadvantage to her. Her memory really was quite amazing.

Danny supposed that Sam and Tucker would eventually get around to apologizing. It would just take awhile. Danny though, didn't like that time in between, because it allowed bad feelings to fester into something more malicious, which often led to misunderstandings or rash decisions. Even when Sam and Tucker fought between each other, Danny would needle one or the other relentlessly until they cracked and apologized to each other.

Danny should apologize; his hand curled around the curtain, gripping it tight. He should catch Sam and Tucker on the way to school today and say he was sorry.

**_'Why?'_**

It was the right thing to do.

**_'Why can't Sam and Tucker do it then?'_**

Because… he could let go of things more easily than them.

**_'Does it hurt?'_**

Danny sucked in a sharp breath when this thought to him. _Did it hurt?_

…Yes. Yes, it did hurt.

To be the one who always apologized…

To be the one always _expected _to apologize.

Always being in the wrong—always saying he was sorry, it chipped away at his esteem and left him feeling stupid and vulnerable.

Why couldn't they do it? Just this once? How often did they apologize of their own initiative? Did they care enough? Should Danny wait and see?

A sudden creaking at the top of the stairs had Danny swivelling around, dropping the curtain in his invisible hand quickly. With a jolt, Danny realized how late it had gotten. Sometime during his idle thoughts, the sun had risen fully. A short glace at the clock confirmed that it was nearly 7:30am—just the time when his mother woke up to do her morning exercise.

As the lower half of his mother's body came into view from the staircase, Danny decided there was no need for him to fly up to his room. She couldn't see him anyway… And besides… Danny sort of wanted to watch her. The last few times they had talked—when she wasn't out ghost hunting—had been tense and stressful; and Danny missed just seeing his mother happy or even calm.

Danny stood in the middle of the family room, invisible, as his mother descended the stairs toward him.

* * *

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* * *

Maddie Fenton was bothered.

Nothing seemed to be going right as of late. At work, the bizarre case she and Jack were investigating was going nowhere. Someone had taken a teenager's cat and hung it from the flagpole at her children's school. There was no motive, no evidence and no clues. If a human had done it, he would've had to been able to fly. If a ghost had done it, it would left some ectoplasmic residue. Maddie was sorely tempted to tell the police to just close the case and send their condolences to the family, there was no point in prolonging their pain over a case that would never be solved. But of course, the police, having finally grabbed their time in the spotlight, were unwilling to loose it over something as insignificant as an _unsolvable _case. They weren't officially working with Maddie and Jack, but they knew well that whatever result the two ghost hunters got would reflect directly on the police. Maddie and Jack had to find the perpetrator. Failure was not an option.

Not to mention, the mystery she _really _wanted to be working on, the '_Willo' _case, was not open to her. Someone had been systematically breaking into and vandalizing the most expensive stores in the city… and stealing nothing. It baffled the police to no end that someone would take all the effort of getting passed the many alarms, triggers and traps just to tear apart the store. Why?

They'd called Maddie and Jack in, but instead of allowing them to make a thorough search, had hindered them and pressured them into making a speedy decision. At first glance, it seemed like there was no way a ghost could have gotten passed the myriad of ectoplasmic sensors in the stores. That had been enough for the police and she and Jack had immediately been escorted off the perimeter with not-so-polite instructions to not return.

But Maddie was suspicious. The bizarre yet repetitious behaviour the criminal—Willo—was exhibiting was a classic textbook definition of a restless spirit. After all, what else but a ghost would have no use for jewels or money?

But the police had been final. This was _their _case and they were going to solve it—and rake in all the subsequent glory—themselves. Without the help of a bunch of supernatural eccentrics.

Yes, Maddie's job was a veritable mess at the moment.

And then there was her home life.

Honestly, Maddie had no idea what was going on with Danny recently. He was moody, reclusive and not acting at all like the kind, sweet boy she knew. His marks had taken a turn at the beginning of the term and had dove-tailed from there. When confronted about it, he had gotten upset and defensive… and then he'd began avoiding her. Worse, Maddie had a feeling Danny was lying to her. Danny was normally an awful liar, she could tell it clearly on his face and in his twitchiness if he was lying about something… More than that though, Danny never lied about something big. Never. And Maddie had never doubted that.

Until now.

There was something wrong in Danny's life. He was going through something huge and Maddie had a feeling that he had been lying to keep this thing a secret for a very long time. How could she have not noticed? The subtle changes in her boy: from the way he had begun avoiding her to the way he and Jazz's relationship had changed.

Jazz.

Another problem. Jazz had always been extremely bright, and Maddie had always had high expectations of her daughter. Maybe she wouldn't become a ghost hunter like her parents, but one day Jazz would make it to the top: completing her education at the most prestigious school and getting whatever job she wanted. Maddie had not doubted this either.

Now Jazz was thinking about attending community college in Amity. A literal dead end in the path of education. Every time Maddie tried to change her daughter's mind, Jazz tactfully turned away. Her mind was made up.

Why?

Why was all this happening?

What had happened to her close-knit, happy, predictable family?

Patience, time, understanding… screams, threats, anger… nothing worked. Trying to talk to her kids failed, getting angry just made them pull away further. What was she supposed to do? Why _couldn't _she do anything? Was she such a bad mother?

In an effort to escape this drowning, helpless depression she was feeling, Maddie had thrown herself ever further into her work. Hoping to God some miracle would come and fix her crumbling family. But that only made the distance between them greater… Jack was so painfully oblivious to the self-destructive path their kids were traveling… and he wouldn't even listen long enough for her to explain… Day in and day out, Maddie worried over her children, to the point where she couldn't sleep at night.

This morning, as she descended the stairs in a half-hearted daze to do her morning exercise, she couldn't help but spot the picture on the mantle over the fireplace: one which Jack had taken years ago of her and Danny playing together. Danny had a huge, carefree grin on his face—one she realized, with a start, that she hadn't seen on him for a very long time—and she looked young and joyful. Nothing was wrong in that picture. Life was perfect, her children were happy, safe and well; not secretive, upset and troubled.

Maddie grasped the picture in her hands, sat on the couch, hugged it to her chest—

—And cried.

* * *

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* * *

Danny was physically shocked when his Mother started crying.

Wide-eyed and torn with the frightened indecisiveness of a child figuring out for the first time that they're parents weren't infallible—Danny very nearly dropped his cloak of invisibility and ran to his Mother.

But stopped himself at the last moment.

For a second, Danny just watched his Mother. Sitting there, hunched, in her worn jogging pants and t-shirt, curled protectively around that old picture of them… she looked so vulnerable and frail. Danny noticed that there were dark circles around her eyes, and as she cried, her body trembled, just slightly with exhaustion. She looked like she was running on the end of her strength— that this break down had been long in coming. When had this happened? How long had his Mother been tired and pained, and why hadn't he noticed before it got so far?

Danny shook his head. It would do no good to berate himself on things that had already happened. Right now he had to work on a way to fix it.

Sneaking away stealthily—he knew she wouldn't hear him, but was overly cautious nonetheless—Danny made his way into the kitchen. Then, hiding in a place where she wouldn't see the resulting flash of light from his power, Danny turned human. Smoothing down his pyjamas and mussing up his hair a little, Danny hoped that he looked like he'd just gotten out of bed. Then, after grabbing a glass and filling it with water, he made his way slowly back into the family room—an odd combination of guilt, dread and sadness twisting his insides.

"Mom…?" He called out, very softly. His Mother, still crying quietly, didn't seem to hear him. "Mom?" He tried again, louder.

Maddie jumped at the sudden noise and looked around with watery eyes. Upon spotting Danny at the kitchen door, looking very much like a deer in the headlights, she gasped and wiped quickly at her tears.

"Danny…" Her voice was weak and her nose was stuffed. She must look a mess.

"Here."

Danny's low voice near her made Maddie look up, she hadn't realized he'd gotten so close. Danny was holding out a tissue and the glass of water, looking at her with serious eyes. Maddie was struck by how mature Danny looked in that moment. There was no trace of childishness, or awkwardness, just a very deep feeling of understanding. Maddie stared at Danny in wonderment. When had her little boy grown up?

The water refreshed her raw throat but using the tissue to wipe at her eyes and nose didn't help much, and Maddie drew the tissue away with a small wry twitch of the mouth. Again though, she was surprised when Danny extended his hand toward her. She looked up at him questioningly.

"I thought you might wanna… er… use the washroom or something…?" Danny's confidence waned as he said this and he gave her a small, sheepish smile. "Just for… you know. Then we can talk."

Maddie was honestly surprised. It took a lot of empathy to realize another person's comfort and underlying needs. Anyone else would have offered her a tissue and demanded she tell them what was wrong immediately, regardless of how awful and stuffy she felt after just crying. But here Danny was, putting his curiosity aside, realizing that giving her some time to collect herself was ultimately better than hounding her with questions.

Maddie's heart crumbled. _This _was the Danny she knew; _this _was the Danny's she'd feared had disappeared.

How good it was to know he hadn't changed so much.

Maddie smiled and took Danny's hand—not failing to notice how he pulled her to her feet with relative ease—and walked into the bathroom to clean herself up.

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As his Mother walked away, Danny's strong posture didn't fade. Instead his eyes remained on the door his Mother disappeared into, staring intensely into the wood.

It was like the second he'd walked into the room—seen his Mother look up at him in clear shock, trying desperately to hide her pain—that he'd felt unknown strength bleed into him. He'd drawn himself up—intent on being the strong one for her, for once.

Even now, he didn't allow himself to falter.

When his Mother emerged from the washroom many minutes later, Danny had changed his clothes and was bringing out two cups of steaming tea. He placed the cups on the coasters then sat down on the couch, gesturing for her to sit near him.

Maddie laughed lightly—a small hiccup breaking her voice—when she saw the teacups laid out on the table. Sitting down, she took her cup and sipped it lightly.

"Mmm," Her eyes fell halfway in pleasure, then opened wide. "This is perfect, Danny! Earl Grey, my favourite. How did you know… and how did you know how much sugar and milk to add?"

Danny laughed. "My secret." He said; an amused gleam in his eye.

Maddie couldn't help but smile. "Oh, Danny… when did you get so mature?"

The light-hearted grin slipped off Danny's face and a silence fell for awhile. "Mom…" He began slowly. "I… I've been like this for awhile… You… haven't noticed."

The tone was carefully ambiguous, but Danny's words cut deep. Maddie looked down. "You've… been avoiding me, Danny."

"I know." This admission came so quickly that Maddie looked up. "But whenever I try to talk, you don't listen."

Maddie's indignation rose like a flame in her chest, but she stifled it. "What… what do you want to say?" She asked quietly, looking into her tea.

"Mom… I… got a 98 on an English test yesterday."

Maddie's eyes shot up to look at Danny, but he was looking away to the side not meeting her eyes. She had not expected him to say that.

"I've been doing well in school recently, Mom. My average is a B now."

Maddie remembered with an ill feeling how she, only yesterday, had yelled at Danny, saying he was doing bad in school. She hadn't known. "I didn't know…" She whispered.

"Progress reports went out just a couple of days ago. I told you… You haven't had time to look at it yet."

Maddie was silent. She remembered now: Danny shyly poking his head into the lab, saying hesitantly that he'd just gotten his progress report in. Maddie had been right in the middle of an important test trial of a new ghost weapon with Jack. She had told him to keep it on the desk. She'd thought his behaviour indicative of yet another disappointing report card… She hadn't known…

"Danny…" Maddie's voice caught. "I'm—"

"Don't worry about it." Danny interrupted right in the middle of her apology, surprising Maddie. He looked up. "You didn't know, and you were busy. I understand. It wasn't your fault."

Maddie watched her son, and he gazed back intently. There was no tedium in his eyes. She had his complete, undivided attention. "Danny…" Maddie knew this was the only time she'd be able to ask Danny this question. "What happened between you and that boy?"

Instantly there was a change in Danny's expression. His eyes hardened and his lips tightened into a thin line. Maddie watched in fascination as Danny's entire countenance altered from easygoing and open, to stern and wary.

"Dash Baxter." There was a hidden emotion in his tone that Maddie couldn't identify.

"Yes…" She said. "That's him. The boy whose cat was hung—"

"I didn't do that." Danny interjected pointedly.

"I know." The blind trust in Maddie's tone seemed to throw Danny. She smiled: a small, caring curve of her lips. "Danny, I never believed for a second that you could do such an awful thing."

Danny's mouth opened, then closed. The corner of his mouth quirked upward.

"Tell me about it, Danny. That night, when I yelled at you… It wasn't the right way to deal with things. I just don't know how to get you to open up to me, I…" Maddie took a breath. "I know we didn't hear the full story that day. You refused to talk, and everyone jumped to conclusions… Now I want to know the _real _story. Just… tell me, Danny."

Danny was silent for a long while, but Maddie waited, patiently, for him to be ready. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak.

The doorbell rang.

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Danny had been so close. So very _close _to telling his Mother exactly what had happened between him and Dash: what kind of a person Dash was, how he had completely snapped, and how he'd taken down the strongest football player at Casper High.

And if he'd said _that, _who knows what his mother would have asked next… about him, about his fighting ability… about anything at all… She could have asked, and he would have answered. He would have _answered._ So tired was he of all the secrets, he had been ready to tell _everything_…

A cheery _'ding-dong' _rang out again as the doorbell was pressed for the second time.

Danny's eyes trailed over to the door and his Mother followed his gaze.

"I…" Danny trailed off.

His Mother sighed. "I guess… we should get that… Could you?" She gave a rueful look to her wrinkled jogging clothes, then smiled at Danny. He nodded and rose, walking to the door.

Placing a hand on the doorknob, Danny pulled open the door and looked up.

Danny grew very still.

"Well, well, _Daniel._ How very good to see you again, my little badger."

Vlad.

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_End Chapter 11_

_To Be Continued…_

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I hope you enjoyed the introspective look into how Danny's psyche works. Vlad has finally made his entrance! Ooh, I wonder what Danny's gonna do? (Evil grin)

**xXAnimeKittenXx: **Heya! Thanks for reviewing! Uh huh… I can't really say if anything is controlling Danny or not, but there's definitely _something _fishy going on… ;P

**Anonymous Shadow: **Hey! Yup, another long chapter. Not much plot advancement here, mostly character interaction, but Danny is really being affected by what's going on, isn't he?

**pearl84: **Yay for super-long awesome reviews! Wow, you got out of school the same time I did? That's cool, if I may ask, what are you studying? I'm doing International Business, with my area of study being France. It's kind of scary because in a year I'm going to be going to France for a semester to study there, but it's also very exciting at the same time. Yeah, you know, summer holidays kinda imply more time to write, don't they? Odd then that I seem to have even less time than before… how does THAT work out? XD Anyway, this was another long chapter, but I'm kind of worried about the reactions and stuff to it, because there wasn't much action in it. What do you think?

I'm glad you like my Valerie. After Danny and Jazz, she's my favourite character in Danny Phantom. (I was a secret DannyxValerie shipper, don't tell anyone! XD) I always had this impression that she had deeper feelings than came out in the anime. After loosing all her popularity, going from having everything to having nothing, she experienced a huge shift in her basic fundamental values. And then she met Danny's group. First there was Sam, who is Valerie's view, is very much trying to be something she is not (by changing her hair and eye colour, and by pretending she isn't rich). Then there's Tucker… who's a pervert. And then there's Danny… who isn't really weird at all, just unique. I guess Valerie sees Danny as a genuinely nice person, and she's seen so little of that that it amazes her.

If you enjoyed the peek into Danny's thoughts in the last chapter, I really hope you enjoyed this one! XD I just love writing inner monologues and dissecting exactly _what it is _about a person that makes them act in a certain way. Danny, especially, is a lot of fun to take apart :3 In spite of how he might act, there IS a lot of stuff going on in his head… While watching the show, I once wondered 'Why does Danny always have to be the one who apologizes to Sam and Tucker?' and so the entire spiel in this chapter was born! You might have noticed small areas of 'out of characterness' in Danny's thoughts… hm… strange, huh? XD

You know, Skulker and Danny's fight in the last chapter was very _difficult _to choreograph. I would have them on the ground then think to myself 'Oh wait… they can fly!' then I would have them shooting ectoplasm at each other and think 'Oh wait they can go intangible!' They just have WAY TOO MANY POWERS! ARGH! XD It's fun to watch them go at it on TV, but _choreographing_it is something altogether different. I didn't realize until I had to do it. Does this problem ever happen to you?

Err… ok… I guess if you were excited by the Vlad scene in the last chapter, then I should probably be running from you right now! XD I promise though, there WILL be lots of Vlad in the next chapter. I'm already excited just thinking about it! Honestly I've been waiting for him to show up for a long time! Really, I thought he was going to come sooner, but he just kept delaying it, over and over (it's like, I wanted to write him in earlier, but it just didn't happen that way, you know what I mean? XP). Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

**Wishes for Wings:** Hey! How'd your exams go? I didn't update for awhile, mainly cause I was in Montréal without any internet… which was awful. I had to do things like GO OUTSIDE! (Ooh, what's an OUTSIDE? XDD). But anyway, I love your description of my dividers 'jellyfishes eating starfishes' LOL! I think I actually cracked up when I read that. I never thought about it at ALL, but now whenever I see them that's what I think. Congrats! You've officially changed my view on my dividers!! XD I'm very glad you liked the character analysis of Valerie in the last chapter. Picking apart characters and finding out how they tick is something I _adore _doing. I really, really hope you liked the different introspective parts in this chapter! As for the action, there wasn't much in this chapter, but Vlad has finally entered the picture! You can bet that sparks are going to fly come next chapter! And yes! Why DOES Skulker hunt? Hmmm… XD

**MutantLover09:** Hiya! Yup Vlad's made an appearance, albeit at the end of the chapter… again! But at least you have something to look forward to… right? (Debating whether or not I should be running away now XD). At any rate, I seriously DO like it when you point out spelling mistakes I made (manly large ones that ruin the flow of the story or something) because they really bug me! XD I mean, no matter how many times I read a chapter over, once I post it I always find a mistake. But I don't want to inconvenience you by making you take a lot of extra time to check my story, just… if you notice any glaring mistakes then I would love it if you could tell me… Is that fine? At any rate… It's awesome that you like my Valerie! She's actually one of my favourite characters; and writing Clueless Danny is just so much FUN! XD

**Velvet Star: **Heya! Thanks for reviewing! Yup, lots and lots of questions galore, and it's only going to get worse (evil grin). But at least, I can tell you that they'll ALL be answered… eventually! Besides, a little suspense is always fun… right? :P Hope you liked the chapter!

**TexasDreamer01:** Hello! Of course I don't mind that you didn't review the other chapters! I'm just happy you reviewed! XD Hm, you know it's interesting that you should bring up the Egyptian Myth about Anubis and the Feather of Maat, as it was one of the things I was thinking about when I came up with the idea of Legion… I'm not gonna say any more though! XD Oh, but if you want to use my dividers for a story you're writing then go ahead! I don't mind at all :P

**Thunderstorm101:** Heh, heh, yup Pookie the dog was too camera shy to show up, so they got a replacement double: Pookie the cat, to play the part… Poor guy, look what he gets for all his effort! XD

**Risika135: **Hiya! Thanks so much for reviewing! I can't answer any of your questions… except I do think Vlad returned the Packer's mascot uniform XD. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

**Nylah: **Hey! Glad you liked the insight on Skulker, I also hope you enjoyed the insight on Jazz and Danny in this chapter. There wasn't a lot of action, but you can bet sparkswill fly now that Danny and Vlad have met! XP

**sciencefreak330: **Hah ha, I hope you did well on your English paper! Yup, the thing with Skulker _was _weird, you know, I have absolutely NO idea what's going on! ;P

**xheartkreuzx: **Heya! Yeah, FFdotnet deleted my dividers because they stopped supporting long lines of repeated dashes… yet another thing to add to the growing list of things FF doesn't support… sigh…

**Plain English: **Hi! Thanks for reviewing, I'm glad you like the fic so far, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

**Adio!**

**Sholay**


	12. To Respectfully Err

**Heya!**

Alrighty! So, short chapter this time, mainly 'cause I just came back from the States and now I'm off to Portugal in… a day! Goodness, you guys are lucky I'm updating at all! XD

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom is the property of Butch Hartman. I also don't own Apple or the American Museum of Natural History… Though I'm not sure if I really need to disclaim that last one…

Enjoy!

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**_The Soul Sepulcher_**

_-By Sholay_

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**_Chapter 12—_**_To Respectfully Err_

Danny and Vlad locked eyes in silent combat: one pair blazing with intense dislike and the other sparkling with mocking amusement.

"Danny? Who's at the door?" Maddie's voice called from within the house and Vlad looked up expectantly; easily forgetting Danny at the prospect of glimpsing the tall red-headed woman. Danny glowered darkly.

"No one, Mom." He said, staring straight into Vlad's colourless eyes as he placed his palms on the door to slam it shut.

Vlad's foot shot out at the last second, jamming the door open and Danny looked down at the impeccably shiny shoe with resignation. He wasn't surprised Vlad had stuck his foot in the threshold… He'd just been hoping the older halfa would, for once, take the hint and leave.

Pipe dreams.

Vlad's long, spidery hands curled around the doorframe, easing it back open. Danny looked up and crossed his arms, his eyes falling half-mast in deep annoyance.

"Daniel," Vlad tsked. "Such rude behaviour from a young man. You must have learned it from that crude barbarian, Jack. Well, I suppose even years of neglect and insalubrity can be reversed given the proper reeducation. Now son, a kind host should always _invite _their honoured guests into his house." Vlad's smirk crawled across his sly face.

Danny was busy trying to figure out if he had time enough to turn ghost and blast Vlad halfway down the street before his mother showed up. Reluctantly, he decided it wasn't a good chance to take.

"That rule is only for _guests._" Danny was settling for a verbal repartee. "You're more of an infestation."

The teen took great satisfaction in watching the smirk melt right off Vlad's face. But before the older man could appropriate a response, Maddie appeared in the doorway behind Danny.

"Vlad!" Maddie looked surprised. She pulled her fingers through her chin-length hair. "I didn't realize you were here; I thought Danny said there wasn't anyone at the door!"

"Yes, well, Daniel is quite the little mischief maker isn't he?" Vlad looked down his long nose at Danny, then back up at Maddie. "And he's home on a school day! Has he gotten into some trouble, Maddie? Anything you need my help with?"

_'Opportunistic little—' _Danny grumbled mentally. He was more than miffed that Vlad was talking about him like he wasn't even there, and even more miffed that Vlad would use _his _suspension as a chance to hit on his mom. _'Of all the nerve!'_

"Ah—no, no it's nothing. Nothing you need to worry about." Maddie looked vaguely uncomfortable and Vlad appeared momentarily thrown by her apparent disinclination to confide in him. _'Yes!' _Danny pumped a mental fist. _'In your face, Plasmius! Take that, Mom doesn't want you; never has, never will!'_

"But you came all this way," Maddie continued speaking. "Was there something you wanted? Do you want to come in?"

_'No, no, no, no!' _Danny stared in mortification at his mother, who was literally inviting the enemy into their home. She looked honestly concerned though, as any good friend would be. Vlad, taking Maddie's invite in completely the wrong way, beamed brightly and brushed past Danny to follow Maddie into the family room.

"Why, thank you so much Maddie! And might I add: you look particularly ravishing today."

Danny cringed as the smarminess practically dripped off the man's voice. Staring at the now empty doorway, Danny gave the door a half-hearted shove to close it, all the while bemoaning his mother's good nature.

Dragging his feet, Danny moved to join his mother and Vlad in the family room. Passing the stairway, he let his eyes trail the steps going upward unhappily for a second before hardening himself: as much as he didn't want to be in the same room as Vlad, there was no way he was going to leave his mom alone with that fruit-loop.

Entering the room, Danny was just in time to see his mother stoop to swipe up the empty tea cups, remnants from their earlier talk. It reminded Danny that they'd never gotten to finish their conversation, which caused a small stab of regret—wrapped in a blanket of guilty gratefulness—within him. He had wanted to tell his mother his secret… but was also thankful that he hadn't. It was a confusing feeling.

"Oh, Vlad, I'm sorry, but we just finished the tea…" Maddie stood, holding the two cups in each hand.

"No problem." Vlad said smoothly as he slid into an armchair. Even the way he sat: legs crossed neatly, hands on his knee—touching as little of the seat as he could—seemed to insult Danny's family. Vlad's crisp, tailored suit seemed horribly out of place on the ten-year old, faded, sagging couch. "I am sure Daniel wouldn't mind making us some more."

Danny's head shot up and he looked sharply at the empty cups in his mother's hands, then at Vlad. Vlad looked at Danny, his face a perfect mask of gentility, and Danny realized he couldn't refuse. Not without looking petulant and childish.

Maddie's gaze met Danny's. Since that vacation gone wrong—where they'd ended up stranded at Vlad's chalet in Colorado—Danny had come to realize that his mother did understand Vlad's insufferable nature, probably even more than Danny did himself. It wasn't that she was oblivious to the man's self-important nature, his derogative comments toward Jack or his flagrant advances toward her… It was that she dealt with them in a manner much different from Danny. Where Danny would explode with anger and attack Vlad head on, Maddie would let it all slide off her, taking all of Vlad's comments in stride, preferring friendship to enmity.

Perhaps she thought she could change Vlad… or maybe she used his attention in ways that would benefit her… Either way, Danny did not approve of, but did respect, his Mother's decision. And as he looked at her now, her eyes begged him not to start a conflict with Vlad.

And he couldn't refuse.

Danny took the cups, almost roughly, from his Mother's hands and strode into the kitchen. Only once he was safely out of sight did he let the scowl he'd been hiding finally spread across his face.

Vlad was going to drive him to an early grave.

He was halfway there already.

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"Hey Sam! Didja know that the museum's land area alone spans over three acres… that's one million square feet of space! They have, like, fifteen to twenty buildings that make up the entire museum!"

"…Yeah, so?" Sam raised a fine eyebrow, not impressed.

"Sam, you don't get it!" Tucker was typing away on Sam's Mac, pausing intermittingly to fiddle with the mouse. "That's unbelievably huge! You know the American Museum of Natural History in New York?"

"Uh-huh," Sam said hesitantly.

"Our museum is a little over half as big as that!"

"Half?" Sam sounded even more unimpressed.

"_Yes! Half!_" Tucker rolled his eyes at the screen. "That might not sound like a lot to you, but trust me, it is. Especially for a little town like Amity. Why would we need such a big museum? It's not like we've got that much history…"

"I hafta say, it didn't _look _all that big from the outside." Sam said, slowly becoming interested; she peered over Tucker's shoulder to look at the screen.

It was Sam and Tucker's second day on museum research duty. They were in Sam's posh, master bedroom, where the long, blood red curtains had been pulled open—at Tucker's insistence—to admit the sunlight. Currently, they were plugging away on her new Apple computer which sat on an ornate, cherry wood desk. The computer was decked out in fancy bat stickers and curled around one corner of the monitor was a fuzzy black spider: a gift from Danny, who had laughed and told Sam that the computer was 'too white for her' and needed some 'Goth-ifying'. Their first day of research had been long and dull, with minimal results. But now, on day two, it seemed like they were getting somewhere promising.

"Well, here's the amazing part. You see here where it says that there are over fifteen miles of corridors and the approximate room count is near the thousands?" Tucker highlighted the relevant area. Sam read it then nodded. "Okay, well, later on, it goes on to say that most of this area is, in fact, _underground_."

"Underground?" Sam repeated, frowning. "Why would they need so much space underground?"

"That's exactly what I was wondering." Tucker clicked a few things. A black screen with nonsensical writing in white came up; and Tucker typed in some things rapidly before hitting ENTER firmly and sitting back. Another white screen came up, loaded, then filled with information. "Look here, it says here that a series of tunnels runs under the museum… like a subbasement or something." Tucker clicked on a link and a sketchy, hazy map came up: filled with random squiggles, showing tunnels which ran over one another, crisscrossing and splitting randomly in all directions.

Sam squinted at the map. "This thing makes no sense."

Tucker nodded "Of course, it's incomplete. These tunnels are so old no one really knows how big they are. Actually, in the old days, whenever there was an exhibit they didn't want anymore… or got too run down or something… they used to brick it up and forget about it. That's where a lot of these little alcoves come from, I'd bet. Like a… catacombs for ancient exhibits or something." Tucker chuckled at his own joke.

"Ok… I admit, this is cool info and all… and someday I'd definitely like to check it out… but what does all this have to do with our problem?" Sam turned her eyes on Tucker.

"Right, I was getting to that." Tucker brought up another map, this one a simple floor plan of over-ground levels of the museum. "Right here was where Danny fought that ghost." Tucker moved the pen cursor over the area, circling it in vibrant red. "And here," He moved the cursor over to the map of the subbasement. "Is the corresponding area underground." He X-ed the area.

There was silence for a few moments.

"There's… a black dot…?" Sam cocked her head, trying to see what Tucker was telling her.

"A door! That's a door, Sam! Somewhere in that room where Danny was is a door to the subbasement of the museum!" Tucker slapped his hand on the desk, looking up at Sam in triumph.

"So you think… whatever ghost thing that attacked Danny that day…"

"Came from that basement!" Tucker turned back to the computer. "It's the perfect hiding spot, I mean, that basement has been practically forgotten over the years… it would be the perfect hiding place… AND it would explain Dash's cat's murder. Danny said he didn't sense a ghost, but maybe that's because the ghost just came out to do… whatever it did… then went right back? Danny would've had no idea."

"… Speaking of Danny…" Sam's voice got low and Tucker looked at her, wary of an explosion. The violet-eyed girl had been short-tempered ever since that argument with Danny. And, frankly, he didn't have the patience to sit through another rant. "No don't worry," She sent a wry smirk at Tucker, seemingly reading his thoughts. "I'm not gonna bring up that again. What I mean is, Danny would have done all this research too… He's always looking up stuff like this. But if he'd found _this_." Sam nodded at the map of the subbasement. "He would have told us. Definitely. So why didn't he find all this info?"

"Other than the fact that Danny has the research ability of Technus on last year's model of _Portals XL_?" Here, Tucker gave a chuckle, but when he got no response from Sam except a dry look, he quickly sobered. "Right, well… Let's just say that if Danny _did_ do any research, he'd've probably gotten as far as we did yesterday: y'know, those out-of-order water fountains."

"Okaay…" Sam gestured for Tucker to continue.

"What Danny _wouldn't've _done is search the museum's actual database." Tucker dropped his head to the side, swinging around to look at the screen before bringing his head up again. "Danny wouldn't've been able to do _this_." And Tucker clicked the mouse, once again bringing up the black screen with white writing.

Suddenly Sam understood.

"You… _hacked _into the museum's database?" She asked incredulously.

"Not hacked," Tucker raised a finger. "Hacked is such a… _crude _word. I prefer to call it… quality analysis. And Rosalina was a great help with all that." Tucker gave his PDA a fond look. "I wanted to see if their security is top notch. Now that I know it isn't, I can send them an informative, but polite, letter stating precisely where they went wrong."

"Yeah, yeah, you can save the drama. Danny isn't here, so you don't need to exaggerate all your melodramatic, nonexistent hero-isms." Sam leaned over Tucker before taking the mouse and pressing on 'PRINT'. The laser printer beside them whirred to life as the subbasement map and the floor-plan were printed out.

"You… you're still planning to go, aren't you?" Tucker scrutinized Sam, whose profile was turned to him. "Even after Danny said you shouldn't."

"You're coming with me, Tuck." Sam grabbed the papers and stuffed them into her backpack. Before Tucker could say anything, she continued. "And yeah, we _are _going. I don't know what's up with Danny recently, but he's not acting normal. We can check on him after we come back, but right now I think this is more important. Tuck, that monster in that museum _killed Dash's cat_. I'm sure of it. It's the only thing that makes sense. Now, we've got to go take it down… otherwise who knows what… or _who_… it'll attack next. We're saving lives. And if Danny can't see that…"

"Sam," Tucker looked shocked. "You can't just shut him out like that—"

"I'm not shutting him out forever." She gave Tucker a piercing, violet-eyed stare. "Just out of this trip."

"What… What if, you know, we run into the ghost? How're we gonna fight it?" Tucker asked hesitantly.

"Honestly, you're such a scaredy-cat." Sam rolled her eyes. "We've got enough ghost-hunting equipment lying around to handle one ghost. And if you're that scared we can take a cell, so you can call Danny if anything goes wrong. Which it won't."

"Sam… doesn't this feel kinda… wrong?" Tucker spun the leather swivel chair until he was facing Sam fully.

"No." Sam wasn't meeting Tucker's eyes. "What's wrong is how Danny's acting. He thinks he can just say whatever, and we'll just agree; no questions. Well, that's not the way I work. But you know what? I can understand why he thinks like that. I _know _Danny's only trying to protect us and that he really does think he's doing the right thing… And that's what makes it so annoying!" Sam's voice grew progressively louder and more impassioned as she spoke. "'Cause I _know _he's not doing the right thing: his protectiveness is _stifling! _But I can't _tell _him that because it just never seems to get through his thick head. He'll just get all sad and hurt…" Sam's voice dropped off at this last sentence. Now she grew quiet, breathing deeply and staring avidly at a 'Dumpty Humpty' poster on her wall. Tucker watched her, thoughtfully, silently.

"And you see," Sam continued. "The fact that I get all this about Danny will make it even more disrespectful— to him—if I fake-make-up with him just so we can use him as our strongman on our trip to the museum. No. I'm not going to do that. This was _my _idea and I'm not going to force anyone to come along with me. Not even you Tucker." Sam added the last sentence in a sudden burst of rashness, sending Tucker a challenging stare.

"Well, Sam…" Tucker looked up at her evenly. "All I have to say is: _I _more or less came up with the entire plan to get into the museum, so I'm as much in on this as you are. And you know what else? I agree with you about Danny; so, until you both either make-_up_ or make-_out_, I have to make sure I get you back in one piece. 'Cause Danny'll probably kill me if anything happens to you."

There was a soft _slap _as Sam wacked Tucker over the back of the head; but she was smiling.

"Thanks, Tuck."

"So," Tucker raised an eyebrow. "We doing this tonight?"

Sam gave a sharp definitive nod. "Yup. Now hurry up and grab your PDA—ah, I mean your _girlfriend_, Rosalina—we're going to be late for school."

Sam leaned to the side, missing the pillow chucked at her head by inches.

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_End Chapter 12_

_To Be Continued…_

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There'll be action in the next chapter... yup, yup ;p

**MutantLover09:** XD Yup, there's Vlad for ya, king of impromptu entrances and bad timing. And also... awesome, You like Jazz! I always thought she didn't figure enough in the show (I don't believe she had any friends… at least none that she hung out with regularly… she spent more time with Danny than anyone else :3). She's actually one of my favorite characters, so I wanted her to figure more in my story… I also didn't want her to be too perfect (unrealistic) so I gave her some issues. XD Right, so, kinda short chapter, but I'm going off to Portugal in a few days, so if you want to stalk me with a bat you're gonna hafta follow me there! Thankies for the long review (and I'm very glad you liked all the introspection in the last chapter… personally, I enjoy writing it, but I'm never sure if I'm boring my readers or not, so yeah (blush) it's good to hear you liked it!)

**sciencefreak330: **A very, very belated good luck on your exam! I hope you did well on that, as well as your English paper! (English is such a subjective, finicky subject, isn't it? Do you find that they always choose the most awful books for in-class reading? (cough'TheColorPurple'cough).) So, Vlad has officially shoved his way into the fic… poor Danny, he doesn't look like he's handling it well ;D

**Velvet Star: **Hey again! (Grin) Uh huh, and the suspense just continues! Vlad has entered the building and Sam and Tucker are gearing up for something they'll probably regret doing… oh the fun! XD

**Nylah:** Heya! Yeah, Danny-Maddie moments are so fun to write! Danny is just so unbelievably nice, isn't he? XD Thoughtful to a fault. I love how you picked up on the little, subliminal connections that I make in the chapters… I mean, I notice them when I write them, but having you pick up on them and mention them is a whole different thing (you know what I mean? ;P). Hope you liked the chapter!

**Dragonfire411 (**or is it** Mystica234?):** Hello! And thanks so much for reviewing! I'm glad you like my fic so far! I tried looking up your profile to check out your story, but there wasn't one there! Did I go to the wrong page? Sorry!

**Plain English:** Hi! Yup! Vlad makes his grand, untimely entrance! What do you think about his character? I had lots of fun writing him so I hope you liked! :D

**Thunderstorm101: **Heh he, your analysis of Vlad was great, and very accurate! XD Poor Vladdy: fastidious, obsessive and stubborn… he's a great story plot all on his own… too bad Danny's already got his own issues to deal with! XP

**inukagome15:** Hiya! Thanks for the review!! I'm glad you don't think there's too much horror in this fic. I myself hate horror movies, horror books and anything in general that includes ugly, disfigured sociopaths running rampant, mutilating people and innocent scenery alike, for no good reason. I'm trying to go for suspenseful and _creepy _more than anything… so you can rest assured that there won't be anything graphicin this fic. Violence, yes, murder, yes… but gore and disgusting things, no. ;P Thank goodness. Moreover, there is a reason for _everything_ that happens in this fic (one more reason I hate horror: there's no sense to it!), so yup! The plot is there, just hidden. And if you can't guess at it yet then I must be doing my job right! (Or horribly wrong! XDD). Either way, you're _partially _right about everything leading back to Legion… I'll say no more than that! Oh, and I'm glad you liked Danny's witty banter! It doesn't often happen that I come up with sarcastic comments like that, but I'm trying XD Hope you enjoyed the chappie!

**See you all when I return from Portugal!**

**Adio!**

**Sholay**


	13. The Serpent and the Badger

**Hiya!**

Hee, hee, 101 reviews, like the Dalmatians… XD Hee, funny reviews, me likey XP… Ok yes, please excuse the weirdness, it's very late here and I'm a little loony after passing the 100 review mark… I never thought I'd get so many reviews… and in only 12 chapters! Thank you everyone!

Now, it's time for "Lucky" number 13… (insert evil chuckle)

**Disclaimer:** Butch Hartman owns Danny Phantom. I own Legion and the plot.

Enjoy!

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**_The Soul Sepulcher_**

_-By Sholay_

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**_Chapter 13 — _**_The Serpent and the Badger_

Danny was not happy.

It had been hours since Vlad had arrived at his house and the man still showed no sign of leaving any time soon. It turned out that Vlad had come over on 'official business' as town Mayor to ask Maddie and Jack their opinions on the recent increase in crime and decrease in ghostly activity.

Oh yes, Danny was sure Vlad had absolutely _no _ulterior motives.

This situation, of course, had been made all the worse when Danny's father had walked in, swept Vlad up into a crushing bear-hug and subsequently dragged him down to the lab to discuss his newest ghostly invention.

Honestly, Danny hoped one of the more deadly weapons would accidentally misfire and wipe that snarky smirk right off the fruitloop's face.

"Da-nny! Can you come in here for a second?" Hearing his mother's voice from the family room, the teen swept his feet off the kitchen table and stood, running a hair through his hair and mentally preparing himself to deal with the insufferable billionaire before heading into the adjoining room.

"Yeah, Mom?" He raised one eyebrow at his mother, which was quickly joined by the other when he realized she was putting on her coat.

"Yes, um, Danny… Vlad's going to be staying for dinner, but your father and I just got an urgent call from the police. It seems they want us to consult on some new development. I need you to keep Vlad company until we get back, okay?" Maddie said hurriedly while she searched for the keys. "Jack," she said, completely oblivious of Danny's aghast expression. "Where did you put the keys?"

Jack, who already had one foot out the door and hadn't been paying the least attention to what his wife had been saying, turned and gave her a blank look. "Huh?"

"I believe," Vlad interjected smoothly, raising one finger. "That dear Maddie was asking you for the _keys, _Jack." The condescension in his voice made Danny bristle defensively, but he pushed the anger down.

"Happy place, happy place." Danny murmured quietly, closing his eyes and kneading two fingers into his temple. After a few seconds he looked up.

"You might want to check the cookie jar in the kitchen." Jerking a thumb behind him, Danny directed his comment to his Mother, who gave a thankful nod before sweeping out of the room. Danny quickly followed.

"_Mom_," Danny said in an urgent whisper once they were alone. "You can't leave me here alone with that… that… _him!_" He threw his arms out and, though he gestured at the wall, it was clear whom he was about.

"Danny," Maddie sighed, clearly in a hurry and not wanting to have this conversation. "Listen, I know Vlad is a bit of a creep—"

Danny snorted.

"But he's a good man and he has exceptional talent when it comes to engineering and supernatural energies."

"Yeah, great talents in _stealing._" Danny muttered under his breath, thrusting his hands into his pockets. Maddie didn't appear to have heard him.

"It's just that he and your father don't work together that well, so I have to leave him with you until we get back. Now Danny, I need to know I can trust you not to do anything out of hand, ok?" Maddie sent Danny a meaningful stare and he groaned. He hated it when she made him feel guilty for something he hadn't even done yet.

"Alright, fine…" Danny caved.

Maddie smiled. "Good. We'll be back before you know it. And, for your good behaviour, I'll take a week off however long your father said you were grounded."

"He gave it a limit?" Danny's lip quirked dryly. His mother just sent him another smile before breezing out of the room and out of the house.

Silence reigned in the house after Maddie and Jack left. The only thing Danny could hear were the distant sounds of his father talking about picking up some fudge on the way home, then the doors of the Fenton Assault Vehicle slammed shut, the engine roared and then gradually died. His parents were gone.

"So, Daniel…" Danny looked up to the unpleasant sight of Vlad smirking down at him in the threshold of the kitchen. "It's just you and me now, son."

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The school bell rang, signalling the end of classes, and Sam and Tucker were the first to jump up from their chairs and dash out of their classroom, soaring past a disgruntled Mr. Lancer. Taking advantage of the still relatively empty halls, they ran down a row of doors and up a flight of stairs until skidding to a stop before their destination.

Students streamed out from rooms around them, but both Sam and Tucker waited patiently until a very distinctive head of red hair came into view.

"Jazz! Jazz!" Sam called, jumping and waving her hand wildly over the heads of the masses of students. Jazz turned her head curiously at the sound of her name, looking around for a few seconds before spotting Sam and Tucker. She smiled, making her way through the crowd toward them.

"Hey," she said, shifting the stack of books in her hands, she raised an eyebrow at Danny's friends. "What's up?"

"We need to ask you a favour." Sam said, getting straight to the point. "Can you drive us to the museum?"

"Huh? Why?" Jazz frowned, confused.

"Come with us and we'll tell you." Jazz didn't have time to protest as Sam literally grabbed the older girl by the arm and led her down the hallway. Tucker followed with a smirk on his face. Sam's overbearing nature was actually quite amusing to watch when it wasn't directed at him.

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_A while later…_

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"Okay…" Jazz threw back her hair with a flick of her head as they raced down the road in her cherry convertible "So you're telling me that there's something ghostly going on at the museum, which you think is causing all this weird stuff around town… And since Danny's grounded, he asked you to check it out for him?"

"Yeah, basically." Sam said. Her face was perfectly straight; Tucker would never have guessed it was a lie if he hadn't know it for a fact.

"That doesn't sound like Danny…" Jazz muttered, frowning. "Usually he wouldn't want anyone getting in trouble if he could help it… Are you sure that's what he said? It seems to me like Danny would've snuck out himself at night or something…"

"No, no…" Sam assured. "Danny thinks it's not a very dangerous ghost and he didn't want to get into any more trouble with his parents… So I told him to stay behind."

"_You _told him to stay behind? You're the last one I'd expect to be encouraging Danny to follow the rules." Jazz said sardonically, raising one long eyebrow at Sam who flushed suddenly, realizing her mistake. Tucker watched the verbal battle in silent fascination. Both girls were trying to outdo each other: Sam trying to fool Jazz and Jazz trying to catch Sam in her lie. It was the type of conversation only they could have, because Danny had an issue with manipulating people and Tucker had absolutely no skill for it. Tucker supposed this was why the two girls had never really gotten along… They were both simply too smart for their own good.

"Yes, well, Danny's been stressed lately and I want to do this for him." Sam said, trying a different route.

"So you didn't tell him you're doing this." Jazz concluded and Sam's head snapped up.

"I never said that!"

"You didn't have to." Jazz chuckled. "Danny would've never let you go off to hunt a ghost on your own. Especially not if he thought it killed a cat and burglarized several stores. Danny's pretty predictable when it comes to things like that."

"Well, it doesn't matter!" Sam said sharply. "We don't always need Danny flying to our rescue. We're perfectly capable of taking down any ghost."

"Sam…" Jazz said slowly.

"No Jazz, either you help us or pull over so we can do it on our own. I've already decided and so has Tucker." Sam set her jaw and crossed her arms, conveying her resolution with sharp, defiant eyes.

"…" Jazz sighed, watching the road thoughtfully. She knew from experience that one could not move Sam, they could only moving around. "Why didn't you just do this late at night so Danny could come along?"

"We just aren't, okay? We're doing this now and that's that." Sam said definitively.

"If you are wanting in my help here, you're really not making a convincing argument." Jazz said warningly.

"Look," Sam's voice softened. "Tucker has his cell. If things go South, we'll call Danny and he'll be there in a second. We'll be fine, you don't have to worry."

"You're right about that. Because I'm coming with you." Jazz said, raising her chin and showing she too could be stubborn if necessary.

"What?" Sam cried, hands falling from their folded position, she had not been expecting that response at all.

Tucker couldn't help but grin.

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"Okay, look, Vlad." For his mother, Danny would try to make the best of things. And if he was going to do that then they needed to set some ground rules. "We might be under the same roof, but that doesn't mean we have to talk with each other. Now, I'll stay out of your way, if you stay out of mine. And that way, everyone can walk away happy. Okay? Done? Good." And Danny moved toward the staircase leading to his room.

"Ah, ah," Vlad slid in front of the teen, obstructing his way. "I'm afraid, my boy, that that little plan of yours has one fatal flaw."

"And what's that?" Danny grumbled, not bothering to look up into Vlad's eyes.

"It doesn't make _me _happy." Vlad took a step forward, forcing Danny to take a step back to maintain his personal space. "You see, I didn't just come here to talk gadgetry with that buffoon Jack and have tea with the lovely Maddie… though that last one _was _a nice bonus." Vlad smiled. "I also came here to chat with _you, _my boy. Aren't you the lucky one?"

"Oh yes…" Danny said, curling his lip sarcastically "_Lucky._ That's _exactly _what I would call it."

"Now you see, Daniel," Vlad looked to the side, raising the back of his hand to his eyes so he could study his fingernails. "I've been having a rather… irksome issue as of late."

"Oh, finally realized your mental problem, have you?" Danny said glibly.

"And there's that adorable witty banter you like to flaunt around!" Vlad made a vague gesture at Danny. "Tell me, Daniel, when will you get tired of such childish habits?"

" 'Bout the same time you get tired of calling me 'Daniel', I'll bet." He grumbled. Vlad was still advancing, leisurely, but with the undeniable minacity of a predator, and Danny was still backing up, though he was quickly running out of room to move.

"Daniel, Daniel," Vlad tsked. "There's so much you must learn… So much I could _teach _you." At the word 'teach' Vlad's eyes spun to Danny and caught his gaze intently.

"There's nothing you can teach me." Danny had reached the wall and he stood not quite against it, refusing to appear cowardly. He straightened his back and stared Vlad straight in the eye as the elder man loomed over him.

"Your first lesson will be to respect the property of others." Vlad said, folding his arms loosely and staring down at Danny. "Now admit your crime."

"…What?" Danny was flummoxed, and his expression showed it. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"You" Vlad levelled his index finger to Danny's left eye. "Snuck into my house last night and painted graffiti all across the walls. Don't even try to deny it."

"What?! I never did that!" Danny cried, incredulous. It was one thing to be called out on a prank which he actually committed, but to be assumed guilty of something he _hadn't _done? That was ridiculous.

"It will take my servants days to scrub off the mess you made and I demand an apology from you Daniel, right now." Vlad seemed to be loosing his temper. Whatever damage that had been done to his house must have been pretty bad, or he wouldn't be making such a fuss.

"But I really didn't do it." Danny said honestly, though a smirk was pulling at the corner of his mouth.

"Oh don't try to feed me your nonsense." Vlad turned away from Danny with a disgusted expression. "Your ecto-signature was left all over my house last night, so there's no point in even defending yourself. I know it was you that did it. Now take responsibility for your own foolishness, boy!"

"Ex-_cuse_ me?" Danny was done acting defensive, and if Vlad was trying to make him feel guilty then he had another thing coming. "Take responsibility? _Take responsibility? _You're one to talk about responsibility! _Who's_ the one that tricked me and my mom into going on a fake trip that nearly ended up getting us _killed_ by _your _ghost animals? _Whose_ cloning experiments went terribly wrong and nearly destroyed a _life_? _Who _continuously tries to waste_ my father_ on a regular basis?"

"And I have never hidden any of that from you." Vlad swept his arm out in an arc, impeccable suit shining in the fluorescent lights. "You, on the other hand are lying to me right now and I will not stand for it."

"How do I know _you're _not the one lying right now? Huh?" Danny snapped angrily. "How do _I _know you're not just making it all up? Maybe you just want a fight or something; after all, you've always got some evil scheme up your sleeve. You're always up to something… how do I know you're not up to something… right… now…?"

Suddenly Danny paused, and it was like a light bulb had turned on in his head.

"Of course." Danny said. "All of this, everything that's going on… that weird ghost in the museum, Dash's cat, 'Willo'… You're behind it, aren't you?"

"I beg your pardon?" Vlad pulled back with a confused and slightly offended face.

"You always have your greasy hands in this kind of stuff." Danny was reasoning aloud to himself. "So you must know… it _must _be your fault!"

**_'Hurt him.'_**

Danny's sudden rage fell like a veil of red over his eyes.

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"Alright! We're here." Tucker cried happily, jumping out of the car in a clumsy, half-stumble.

"I still don't know about this…" Jazz said slowly as she stepped carefully out of her car.

"Oh c'mon, live a little." Sam said exasperatedly, slamming the car door closed behind herself. "Besides, you're not even going in. You'll just stand outside the door and warn us if anyone's coming in, that should be fine, right?"

"I dunno…" The elder girl hesitated.

"Look, you've fought ghosts without Danny before. What's so different about this one?" Sam asked reasonably as the three of them headed over the sidewalk and into the museum.

"I dunno…" Jazz repeated, wringing her hands. "It just feels… wrong."

"That's just your goodie-goodie side acting up. Look, okay, we're not even breaking into the museum. We're paying for tickets like the good non-voting citizens we are." Sam said flippantly, and the three paid for their tickets.

"Aww man…" Tucker bemoaned his empty wallet. "There goes another month's allowance; and I still have another two payments on this PDA! These museum tickets are so expensive! Why can't these ghosts just hide out in cheaper locations?"

"Shh! Don't say that too loud!" Sam admonished, looking around no make sure no one had overheard. The sparse crowds of people continued to move through the hallways, oblivious. "Remember the plan."

"Yeah, yeah, find the room, sneak in, find the ghost, get the ghost, sneak out before anyone notices and do it all before closing time… yadda, yadda…" Tucker intoned.

"Good. Now Jazz, you in or out?" Sam looked at Jazz closely.

"…I'm in…" Jazz said at length.

"Good!" Sam grinned. "The more the merrier. Now let's find that room."

A few minutes of walking through long, marble hallways and passing exhibition after exhibition of everything from underwater evolution to glittering gems finally found the trio standing before a huge doorway barred off with multiple ropes and a banner of police tape.

" 'Warning. Construction Ahead. Danger. Do Not Enter.' " Tucker read the sign hanging off the ropes, then fingered the yellow police tape idly. "Looks like they still haven't finished cleaning up after Danny's fight."

"Which is good for us." Sam smirked and stepped neatly over the ropes and tape, tugging her short black and red plaid skirt after her. Her heavy combat boots made a dull clunking sound as she landed on the other side of the barrier. "Now we don't have to worry about getting people out of the room so we can do our thing."

"Sam, they must have barred the room off for a reason… Are you sure you shouldn't just come back later? It might be dangerous—" Jazz's words of worry were interrupted by Sam.

"It'll be fine, we won't take long." The dark-haired girl waved a hand dismissively.

"You better not." Jazz said crossly, irritated at being cut off by someone two years her junior. "I'm only giving you fifteen minutes to report back to me, or I'm calling Danny, got it?"

"Yeah, yeah," Sam said, then looked at Tucker. "You coming or what?"

"Oh?" Tucker seemed to have momentarily forgotten he was part of the plan, the dark threshold of the room seemed to tower over him rather threateningly. "You know, I could always just… sit this one out, y'know." He laughed nervously.

"Oh c'mon you chicken." Sam said in exasperation, reaching her hand under the tape and rope to grab Tucker by the collar of his green shirt. Tucker yelped and had to duck to avoid getting tangled in the barrier as he was dragged through.

"Fifteen minutes!" Jazz called as Sam and Tucker disappeared in the doorway.

"Gotcha!" Tucker called, waving a hand, while Sam just kept walking.

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"Daniel! What on Earth do you think you're doing?" Vlad's voice came, shocked as he was forced to duck or have his head blasted off by the ectoblast sent his way.

Danny stood only a few feet away, his hands tensed into claws, glowing dimly with green energy and his eyes pulsing a vibrant green—though he hadn't yet turned ghost. Danny advanced on Vlad; and as he did, the colour bled out of his hair, turning it white. His skin darkened and the silver and black jumpsuit of his ghost form became visible as his clothes shredded off into nothing.

Vlad had never seen Danny turn ghost in such a manner.

"Now Daniel. Daniel! Think about what you're doing!" Vlad dodged to avoid another ectoblast, but missed the next one which sent him careening into a cabinet. "By God, boy! You're destroying your own house!"

But Danny didn't seem to hear. His face was frozen into an expression of rage and he just kept advancing. "You… you're the one. I bet it's all part of your plan: the Hound, that creature, the flashes… everything! You… you want me to go crazy, don't you? DON'T YOU?! It would all work so _perfectly _into your _perfect _little plan of that _perfect _little life you want, wouldn't it?!" Danny literally spat the words at Vlad.

"Daniel, be reasonable!" Vlad brushed off his suit and frowned at the younger boy. "I have no idea what you're babbling about."

"Oh?!" Danny said, his eyes widened, tilting his head to the side mockingly. The expression on the teen's face made him look half-mad and Vlad stared. "Babbling am I? Well how's this for babbling?" And he leapt at the man's throat.

"Ah!" Twin rings of black light snapped around Vlad and in a flash he was Plasmius, which was probably the only thing that saved him from being strangled by the younger halfa. Vlad grabbed the teen's hands as they closed around his neck and swung Danny around. The boy's feet caught on the disregarded tea mugs and brought them crashing toward the ground. Gritting his teeth, Vlad looked at the broken mugs, then up at Danny who had ripped his hands from Vlad's and jumped backward. Danny didn't seem to care in the least that he was causing destruction to his own house, so the elder decided to take matters into his own hands.

"Very well, my boy. If that's how you want to play the game…" Vlad crouched, then swiftly flew at Danny. The teen, unprepared for the attack, only had time to bring his arms up around his face as Vlad tackled him and phased them both through the ground and into the lab. Vlad threw Danny away from him as soon as they'd passed through the ground and the boy shot through the air before slamming hard against a wall and falling to the ground, head hanging and white hair dishevelled. "Then we are going to do things properly." Vlad concluded, folding his arms as he floated in mid air, cape fluttering around his body. "Now first, explain to me exactly what you're so upset about."

Danny growled, putting a hand to his head and shaking it. Vlad, thinking he'd knocked some sense into the boy, lowered his arms and flew closer. But Danny, unpredictable as a threatened lion cub, lashed out violently and Vlad stumbled back as the boy's fist connected with his cheek.

"You—!" But Vlad didn't have the leisure to finish his sentence as Danny struck out again.

"Don't you—" Danny whipped the air with his foot. "Pretend to care—" He fired a series of ectoblasts. "About me—!" The air in the room dropped ten degrees as a cold blue aura shrouded Danny's arms and hands. Danny brought his hands together in a clap then threw them out away from each other with a yell. Many glittering icicles formed in a row where Danny's hands passed, swirling until they all pointed straight at Vlad and then flew at him all at once. Vlad had no choice but to conjure a shield and wait until the icicles destroyed themselves on it. While he defended himself, though, Vlad neglected to watch his back.

"I see right through you." Danny's voice was colder than the icicles and when Vlad turned, he was met by a vicious power-charged backhand that threw him straight into a desk and over it, sweeping it clean of fragile test tubes, machine pieces and papers that fell to the ground in a loud crash.

When Vlad rose, there was no more patience in his eyes. His body shimmered, then spilt into four clones that all looked up at the floating teen with hostility. "That's it, Daniel." One of the clones said. "I'm done trying to talk sense into you. If you insist on acting like a savage animal, then I will treat you no better than one."

Danny bared his teeth in something that was not a smile. "Come and try."

The halfas flew at each other and collided in a shower of bright green and pink sparks. In a matter of minutes they had reduced the room to shambles, caused black burns in the ceiling and floors and knocked twelve inch dents into the walls, and still they showed no signs of slowing.

Danny was a speeding blur as he zipped between the four Vlads with the consistency of water. His tail was a spectral tail, but his hands more than made up for his lost feet. With the finesse of a trained marksman, Danny fired off precision ectoblasts interspaced strategically with blasts of his ice power. Few of his hits missed.

Vlad, on his part, was having an unusually difficult time keeping up with the teen. This new, cold, calculating Danny was very different from the passionate, emotional boy he usually fought. Every attack of Vlad's would skim off a deftly placed shield or miss completely. And though the older halfa was indeed the stronger of the two, Danny was clearly the faster, and Vlad could not assert his power if he could not even lay a hand on the boy.

With growing frustration, Vlad felt his concentration slip. Danny sensing this, swooped in for the kill and Vlad was helpless as he saw first one then another of his clones meet a quick demise.

"Not so cocky now, are you, Plasmius?" Danny appeared to be feeling talkative again as he had moved back a safe distance, folding his arms as he floated in mid-air—no doubt copying the very pose the elder halfa had held when he's stood over Danny just a few minutes ago.

"Daniel…" Vlad realized he was panting heavily and willed himself to breath normally. After a few moments of controlled breathing he spoke again. "Daniel… where did you learn to fight like that?"

Danny frowned. Clearly that was not the response he'd been expecting.

"You… are spectacular! The speed at which you can move… and those powers of yours! Barely a month ago you were completely inept at using those ice powers of yours… Now look at you! Your control is flawless… The speed at which you adapt to power is extraordinary! Daniel, you have… so much potential. There are things… so many things, I could teach you. Think of what you can accomplish now. I can help you double it!"

"Oh yes, and all I have to do in return is renounce my father and become your evil apprentice for all eternity, isn't that right?" Danny spat caustically, he jerked in the air, a physical manifestation of how angry he was.

"…" Vlad thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No… no, Daniel. I will train you because I know you would make me proud. For too long I have overlooked your potential because of your stubborn nature. But no more. I am extending my hand for you to take." Vlad reached out his hand, palm up. "All you have to do is take it. No strings attached."

Danny looked at the hand then Vlad, his anger draining into a look of shock, surprise, then disbelief.

"No… No that can't be… you must be lying. You must!" Danny sounded almost desperate as he cried these words out to the elder man.

"I am giving you my word that I am being honest." Vlad said staring straight at Danny. "Our feud has gone on long enough. It is time to end it."

"No… NO!" Danny suddenly gripped his head in his hands. He swayed in the air, then fell to the ground, dropping to his knees. "**NO!**"

"Daniel?" Vlad also landed on the ground, concern heavy on his words. "Daniel, what's wrong?"

"You! YOU! You're what's wrong! You HAVE to be at fault! You…You… not allowed…" Danny's entire body suddenly spasmed and he froze, an expression of horror on his face.

"Daniel?" Vlad was now very worried and he knelt on one knee, raising a hand above Danny's shoulder but not lowering it.

"Ah…haa…not now…oh, not now…" Danny murmured to himself, his eyes wide and seat forming on his brow. His shoulders began to shake and he rocked forward, then backward and overbalanced. He fell to a sitting position on the ground, legs splayed before him. Then he pushed himself further backward with his heels until he hit a wall. And he curled his knees up. One trembling hand rose to his right shoulder and gripped it tightly. Danny's chest began to heave as his breathing turned into loud pants. "Haa… haa… no…"

"Daniel, Daniel, please, tell me what's wrong." Vlad was now pleading with Danny as he looked at the boy and saw an expression of agony twist his face. Vlad had no idea what was going on. He hadn't hit Danny hard enough to cause such a severe reaction, so what was happening to him?

Danny gave another spasm then jerked forward and rested his head on his knees. He was trembling uncontrollably now and looked to be in great pain. Vlad hovered, not knowing what to do. Touching Danny could result in another violent reaction, but it wasn't like there was anyone Vlad could find to help…

"Daniel, please." Vlad was helpless. He didn't like to feel helpless "Just tell me what's wrong. I can help you." And he laid a hand down on Danny's right shoulder.

"**_NO!!_**"

A surge of energy came out of nowhere and slammed into Vlad full force, throwing him clear across the room and into a wall. Leaving a man-shaped dent in the wall, Vlad's body peeled off and crumpled to the floor. Vlad was glad that he was still in his ghost form, or else more than a few ribs would have broken from the impact. Shakily, he stood, wondering what had just hit him.

"Daniel?" Vlad asked.

"I don't want your kind of help." Danny's voice was low, and it held a dark tone Vlad had never heard the boy use. Danny's head was handing, bangs obscuring his face, but he didn't seem to be trembling anymore. In fact he was very still. "I bet you enjoyed hanging Dash's cat, didn't you, Vlad?"

"What?" Vlad was again confused. Then a realization hit him. "You mean the cat of that boy you got suspended for getting into a fight with?" Vlad frowned disapprovingly. "Oh Daniel, you can't honestly think I'd do such a thing—"

"**_SILENCE!_**"

Vlad's mouth snapped shut and he stared. That voice… did not sound like Danny at all…

Slowly, Danny began to move. His legs unfolded in an awkward manner—as though they were asleep… or being moved by someone who wasn't used to having legs. His arms hung limp, with his chest bent half over as he swayed to his feet like a puppet on strings. Still, white bangs obscured Danny's face, but slowly the chin tilted up and brought his face into view.

Danny's eyes were completely black.

"Daniel…!" Vlad gasped.

"**_Die_.**" Danny's mouth moved, but the voice that came did not seem to originate from him. An arm lifted, straight, palm out, and black energy converged into the center of Danny's hand before exploding outward. As the energy left him, Danny let out a cry of pain, grabbing his forearm and collapsing onto the ground.

Vlad yelled as the ball of black fire came at him and conjured a shield. But the fire passed through the shield as though it didn't exist and Vlad had to throw himself quickly to the side, landing in an undignified heap on the floor.

The black fireball hit the wall with the force of a wrecking ball. The resulting boom echoed in Vlad's ears and jarred the entire house like a minor earthquake.

Vlad then realized there was a quiet crackling sound near his head and he looked over in sudden fear as he saw the edges of his cloak being _eaten away_. Thinking quickly, Vlad unclasped the cloak and threw it away from him. The fire continued to devour the cloak happily, but Vlad's attention turned toward the wall.

The black energy had created a huge hole in the wall… Vlad couldn't believe it. Titanium reinforced, heavy, ghost-proof walls of more than three inches had been torn to nothing by a _single blast_. It was impossible. And yet there it was: a perfect circle carved into the wall, exposing raw wires from the ghost portal that sparked and fizzed angrily in the air.

A high, desperate whine caught Vlad's attention and looked back at the cause of all this destruction with wide eyes.

"Daniel…" He watched in fascinated horror as the boy writhed painfully on the ground, clutching his right arm—still glowing with black energy—and struggling with something only he could see.

Danny managed to make it to his knees again and he looked at Vlad through haze-filled, unfocused, green eyes. "Haa…haa… Vlad… please… please… make it… Make it stop…"

Vlad looked at the boy for a long moment, but when Danny's face contorted and the black energy flared around his arm, Vlad made his decision. He appeared behind Danny and looked down at the teen.

"I… am very sorry, my dear boy." And with a swift, merciful strike, Vlad knocked Danny unconscious.

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Looking at the high arching doorway, Tucker peered into the dark room. It seemed very dark and gloomy, very unlike all the other bright and open rooms in the museum. Gingerly, Tucker took his first steps into the room and unexpectedly a wash of fierce coldness gripped him and he shivered violently.

"Man, S-Sam," He said, teeth chattering and hugging his arms closely. "D-did you f-feel that? It's-s like s-stepping into a frozen lake or s-something."

Looking ahead he saw that Sam was rubbing her bare arms vigorously. "Yeah," She said, biting down on her own chattering teeth. "I feel it. It's like a ghost."

"S-strong ghost." Tucker muttered, remembering one of Mr. Fenton's impromptu lessons on ghost energy. The stronger a ghost was, the greater its physical effect on humans. He had yet to meet a ghost that made him shiver this strongly… and he wasn't really eager to start now.

"Or one that uses ice powers." Sam pointed out, reminding Tucker of the time when Danny had, completely unconsciously, been causing the air to drop to near sub-zero temperatures around himself.

"Right…" Tucker said, not completely convinced. But the cold was subsiding and with it returned his courage. He looked around.

The floor was made of marble, as were the walls, which curved high up into decorative arches. There were no lights on in the room, and Tucker could see none on the walls or ceiling. The only source of light came wavering in between the folds of heavy curtains that covered high windows, only adding to the creepy gloom in the room.

"It's kinda… dark in here…" Tucker said hesitatingly.

Sam smirked and walked over to a window and threw open the curtain

Wind suddenly whistled through the room, causing the curtains to flap wildly. Sam and Tucker looked around in surprise and trepidation, but the windows were closed and the source of the wind was unknown. Eventually the howling wind died down and both teens brushed the incident off.

"There," Sam said. The light streaming in from the window brightened the room considerably. "Better?"

"Yeah…" Tucker's attention was now on the room itself. The once prim and delicate displays lining the walls and standing on granite pedestals were now strew about the room in varying forms of chaos. Chucks of granite and glass littered the floor along with pieces of painted wood and ripped cloth that had once been ancient tribal masks and grandiose tapestries. The mess was so great that, though they had only taken a few steps into the room, Jazz—standing anxiously at the door—was already out of sight. "Hey… don't you think they should've cleaned all this stuff up by now?" Tucker asked.

"Huh… I dunno…" Sam said, giving the mess a curious look. "Maybe they've been busy with other stuff."

"Hmm…" Tucker twisted his mouth dubiously, then pulled out his PDA. "Ok… so it says in the map that the entrance to that underground chamber should be along the back wall…" Tucker picked his way over the jagged piece of rock and splinters with relative ease: his baggy beige cargo pants facilitating the movement. But when he heard a loud, annoyed 'Tch' come from behind him he stopped and turned.

"Sam?" He called, seeing her bending down to look at her leg. "You ok?"

"Fine." Sam's mouth was set in a displeased line. "Just ripped my tights." With a quick swipe of her thumb, she cleaned the beads of blood neatly off a tiny cut near her knee and straightened. "Don't worry," She smirked at Tucker who was still watching her. "I'm not going to cry or something."

Tucker laughed. "Now that really _would _worry me."

His laughter died away, leaving them in an uneasy silence as the atmosphere in the room seemed to shift as they went deeper into the room. Tucker felt as though they were invading something private… and whoever owned this place wanted them _gone_. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as another, quiet whistle of air passed over him from the back… it felt like someone was watching them.

Tucker clenched his teeth and stopped.

"What's wrong?" Came Sam's voice from behind him.

He didn't answer. Instead, he swung the pack on his back around and dug his hand deep into it. Drawing out a lipstick blaster, a small ectogun and a Fenton Thermos, he handed the gun and the thermos back to Sam while putting the lipstick in his own pocket.

"Tucker…?" Sam took the proffered items but sent him a questioning look.

"Bad feeling, s'all." He muttered.

And they continued in silence until they hit the back wall.

"Ok, I'll look around the wall, you look on the ground." Tucker said, Sam nodded. "We have… less than ten minutes before we have to call Jazz."

"Right." And Sam bent, putting on a pair of black gloves before slowly beginning to clear the dust and broken glass off the ground before her. Tucker squinted at the wall, bringing the side of his index finger to rest under his nose thoughtfully.

"Hey Sam…" He spoke after a couple of minutes.

"Hmm?" Sam looked up, brushing her bangs off her face with her arm.

"There's no secret trapdoor here, but… these murals." Tucker swept his fingertips along an unbroken glass panel shielding a line of tribal paintings. "They're very… odd…"

"How so?" Sam stood, dusting herself off and walking to Tucker's side.

"Look," He said, pointing to one on the farthest left, then drew his hand rightward. "They depict a scene… or a ritual. The people of the village are fighting this other group of people here who are coloured black."

"Ok…" Sam frowned at the little stick figures, all brandishing spears and pointy objects angrily.

"Then here… they defeat their enemy." Tucker continued.

Sam found the crude picture of prone black figures with gaping mouths, spears sticking out of them at all angles and blood running beneath them strangely grisly.

"That's all normal stuff to depict… but here." Tucker pointed to the next picture. "Is where it gets weird… Look, the enemy is defeated, but now the people are all bowing to some weird god or something."

Sam looked at the next picture and found herself drawing back in disgust in spite of herself. While the figures were all made in crude detail, this new figure was very graphic. With huge rolling eyes and lolling, dripping tongue the monster squatted grotesquely in the blood of the enemy. It was a truly nightmarish creature, with misshapen limbs and an asymmetrical body shape it was uglier than anything Sam had ever seen. With a huge, wolfish maw, its mouth gaped hungrily at the prostrating figures before it.

"What… does it want?" Sam asked, wondering—even as she asked the question—how she knew the monster wanted something.

"That, I suspect." Tucker said, his voice very low. And he pointed at the next picture.

Sam looked, and immediately regretted doing so. She swallowed. The picture she was looking at depicted what looked like a sacrificial pyre, upon which one of the black figures lay, blood still dripping down the sides. One of the other figures held aloft what Sam assumed to be the dead man's heart while yet another man offered a bowl of blood to the demon.

"They offered… for it… to drink?" Sam couldn't quite make herself say it.

"It seems their god wasn't the only one that drank the blood of the dead." Tucker said quietly. And as Sam looked closer she could see many bowls in the hands of the figures surrounding the pyre.

"So they…" Sam was utterly disgusted.

"Looks like it… then they had some kind of crazy party…" Tucker said. And indeed the next picture showed the figures all dancing wildly around the monster.

"That's sick." Sam turned away from the wall sharply. "And it has nothing to do with what we're here for. So just… ignore it…" And she bent down to continue sweeping the ground.

"Yeah, yeah, okay." Tucker agreed, kneeling to join her.

It didn't take long before Sam made a discovery of her own.

"Tucker! Hey Tucker! I think I found something. Come look!" Sam beckoned Tucker to her and he crawled over to her side, gazing down at what she was looking at.

At first glance, it looked like a manhole cover, except it bulged outward in a wide half-sphere. It was made of a heavy looking dark metal and seemed very old. Carved into the center of the metal piece was a short passage of writing in an unknown language, around which were seven deep impressions.

"What do you think goes in these?" Sam said, passing one finger over the impressions.

"I don't know." Answered Tucker. "But this must be it, the door to the subbasement! Now we just have to find a way to open it!"

Suddenly, the light in the room went out and a howling wind swept over Sam and Tucker, knocking them to the ground. A loud, thunderous slam rocked the room as the doors closed forcefully. Jazz's distant calls went unheard in the screaming wind.

The two teens pushed themselves to their feet, straining to see in the storm of swirling dust that formed in the middle of the room and scarce light that came, stuttering, from the flapping curtains. A shard of glass flew by, striking Tucker across the cheek and he yelped before falling into a protective crouch, bringing Sam down with him. Together, they managed to crawl behind a slab of granite and cowered there as the winds grew steadily stronger. Tucker had never been so thankful for his glasses; they at least provided some protection. Sam however, was huddled into a tight ball, hiding her face between her knees.

After several torturous minutes of the winds howling dangerously around their pitiful bodies, tossing dirt, glass and small pieces of wood into the air, it abruptly stopped. The winds ceased and the suspended glass and wood fell like rain around the pair.

Sam and Tucker did not move for many moments, they just sat there, trembling wildly and breathing frantically, wondering what was going on. Finally, Tucker shook himself to his senses, then grasped Sam by the shoulder.

"Sam, Sam, c'mon, get up." He pleaded.

Finally, after a few seconds, Sam looked up, her eyes wide with fear and mouth slightly open. "Tucker?"

"Yeah, c'mon, get up." Tucker rose, and pulled Sam to her feet.

Sam seemed to be coming to her senses as well and she shook her head. "Right, right. Okay… I'm okay now…"

But when she received no verbal response she looked up at him, only to see him staring open mouthed at something behind her.

"Tucker?" Sam said, her eyebrows furrowing in worry. Slowly—cold dread forming a stone in her belly—she turned, head rising to look upward… and as she did, a soundless scream left her lips and she stared.

**_'Humans. You dare come seek the reliquary of Legion?'_**

The monstrous Hound pawed the ground with a leg formed of pure darkness and opened its maw in a fearsome grin that displayed rows of gleaming teeth longer than Sam and Tucker were tall.

**_'You shall feed well the souls of the condemned, impudent mortals.'_**

"Tucker…" Sam hissed through the corner of her mouth. "Call Danny… _Now_."

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Vlad carried Danny all the way up to his room, and, with infinite care, laid the unconscious boy down on the bed before taking off his shoes and drawing the covers around his shivering form.

The elder man swept a hand over Danny's sweat slicked forehead, brushing the bangs back from his face, but Danny grimaced and moved away from the touch. Vlad sighed and stood.

"Have a good rest, my little badger." He said softly.

Vlad made to move away, but halted suddenly. Pensively, he turned back to Danny. With the tips of his fingers, he drew the covers away from the boy's right shoulder. For a moment, Vlad's hand hovered over Danny's chest, recalling silently how the other had collapsed, clutching his shoulder. Making his decision, his hand descended with the intention of drawing down the collar of Danny's shirt and finding out what was on his shoulder.

But before Vlad's fingers even came into contact with Danny, the boy gave a sharp shudder, face scrunching up, a low whine sounding from his throat and passing between clenched teeth. Danny's eyes squinted shut and he squirmed uncomfortably, nearly tossing the covers off his body.

Vlad recoiled, then backed up, both hands raised palm up in a peaceful gesture. As he moved away, Danny immediately calmed and Vlad let out a quiet sigh. Slowly, he walked forward again and, as though sensing the man's proximity, Danny's body tensed. But Vlad only drew the covers back up around the teen before turning and walking to the door.

At the threshold, Vlad paused, taking one last, ruminative look at the pale boy lying prone on the bed. Then abruptly he spun around, flicking off the light and leaving the room.

When Danny's cell phone lit up and vibrated across his table, he remained oblivious, trapped in his own personal nightmare.

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_End Chapter 13_

_To Be Continued…_

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Heh, heh… I should probably be running away now, huh? Uh huh… well, ta folks! (dashes away)

**MutantLover09: **XD Well, yes, Sam's always been a little coughLOTcough hard-headed, hasn't she? Well, at the very least she didn't break in to the museum… just climbed over a whole lot of police tape XP Glad you found that Macrosoft joke funny, by the way, cause I myself thought it was a little funny, but I wasn't sure if that was just me being incredibly nerdy ;p. Oh and this is kinda late (sorry!) but insalubrity basically means 'unhealthy'; so when Vlad said years of insalubrity were affecting Danny, he was saying that Jack was creating an unhealthy environment for Danny to live in :P Anyway, Portugal was fun, thanks! And now I'm back, so you can stalk away XD (Am wondering if I should be scared now… o.O)

**sciencefreak330: **Hey! Congrats on the awesome marks! Oh and yes, you were right, something bad _did _happen to Sam and Tucker (grins evilly) poor guys… that's what they get for chasing down the big, bad, evil ghostie without Danny!

**Yugisrose:** Hiya! And thanks so much for reviewing (twice!)! I'm glad you liked the hiding spot thing, I like describing little bits of Danny's thought process and psychology, so I'll probably have a few scenes like that in the fic…. Oh and certainly something went very, very wrong in the museum… too bad Sam and Tucker have such _incredibly _bad timing to call when Danny's out cold!... Yeah, I'm evil, I know… XD

**TexasDreamer01: **Thanks for the review! Whoa… you're already asking about a sequel? Well… to be honest I haven't thought that far yet XD We've still got quite a few issues to work out in _this_fic before we can have a sequel! Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

**Thunderstorm101: **Typical isn't it, to have rules and expectations that other people must follow, yet not follow them oneself? Sam doesn't see that the very thing she is accusing Danny of doing, she herself is guilty of… but isn't that human nature? ;p Now She and Tucker have gone off and gotten themselves into some major trouble… oh the horror! (Evil grin) I'm not enjoying this! Nope, nope! XD

**Velvet Star: **Hee, hee, looks like Danny's quite incapable of saving Sam and Tucker at the moment… whatever will they do? I'm glad you're enjoying the story so far, hope you liked the chapter!

**inukagome15: **Uh huh, definitely something weird going on in that museum… but Vlad's not ALL bad… he's just got some major issues going on :P Portugal was great fun, thanks for asking! It was all bright and sunny and warm… what was really cool though was how all the streets (EVERY one of them) were paved in white cobblestones! It made the entire city look bright and open… but goodness forbid you try to walk around in heels! (you WILL die! XP) I, being the clumsy oaf I am, was tripping all over, even _without _heels XDD. Anyway, hope you liked the chapter!

**Anonymous Shadow: **Hiya! (Grin) You know, it's really nice to hear that you find this story easy to picture… since I've really been trying to work on that with my detailing and stuff… Can I ask you how you found the fight scene, and also Tucker and Sam's investigation of the museum? I was trying to create this dark, spooky sort of atmosphere, and I'm not sure how it came across ;p Thanks for reviewing!

**Plain English: **Heya! I'm glad you like Vlad! (Chuckles) I wonder though, what do you think about him after this chapter? Seems like he's not all bad, huh? And yeah, Sam and Tucker got themselves into one BIG mess! XD

**Akia Starfrost: **Hi! Oh, really? You have an idea of where this story is going? Please tell me! I love hearing opinions and thoughts, sometimes they give me inspiration and other times it's just fun to read what you're thinking! I'm glad you liked the Danny/Maddie moment, I was a little afraid that people would be only expecting action and suspense, and would be bored by it, so it's nice to hear that you didn't find that… Also, to tell you the truth, that part about Danny apologizing jus to resolve things between his friend, I myself have done that… and I feel that Danny is the sort of sensitive, caring person that would do that sort of thing all the time, especially with friends like Sam and Tucker (Sam, who has a lot of pride, and Tucker, who doesn't have much tact). Oh and about that black spot on Danny's shoulder… well… I think this chapter should have answered your question, huh? ;D Anyway, thanks for the long review, it's funny that you reviewed the day before I posted, huh? XD

**Adio!**


	14. In the Shadow of the Sun

**Hiya!**

Er… not much to say here :3 Long chapter, have fun! (And YAY! This fic is-almost-officially one year old! That's so cool!! :D)

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom and all related characters are the property of Butch Hartman.

Enjoy!

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**_The Soul Sepulcher_**

_-By Sholay_

_Summary_—_Sepulcher: a reliquary or shrine where ancient relics are preserved. It all started with an attack on the museum. Now, between school, friends, family and Vlad, Danny's problems are only beginning when Clockwork arrives bearing a mysterious glowing stone._

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**_Chapter 14—_**_In the __Shadow of the Sun_

The front door slammed shut behind Maddie and Jack Fenton as they returned home.

"My goodness, Jack," Maddie said while shrugging her coat from her shoulders. "That poor family, can you believe it?"

"She got out safe, her and her kid, so it's all OK." Jack answered with an optimistic smile as he took off his own coat and kicked his boots from his feet. "And besides, we didn't find any ghostly residue in the area so it was probably just a freak accident. Don't worry about it." He laid a large hand on his wife's shoulder, squeezing gently. Jack's cheerfulness was catchy and Maddie found the tension within her slipping away, she smiled.

Someone cleared their throat noisily.

"Oh, V-man!" Jack exclaimed happily at the vaguely disgruntled looking man. "You're still here!" He moved away from Maddie and gave Vlad a mighty thump on the back.

Vlad staggered embarrassingly under the weight of Jack's massive hand before catching himself. He quickly straightened his back and fixed his suit jacket. He wondered at the odd, amused smile curling Maddie's lips, but she was probably just happy to see him. "Indeed, Jack. I _was _invited for dinner and I'd never pass up a chance to catch up with my old friend." Vlad gave Jack a tight smile. "But tell me, Maddie." Vlad sobered and looked at the red-headed woman. "You were gone for a very long time; were there problems?"

Maddie frowned and looked at Vlad speculatively. "Yes, I'm surprised you don't know about it already, Vlad, since you _are _the Mayor after all." There was a subtle insinuation in her voice which Vlad ignored. Maddie would never deliberately say anything bad about him. "There was a fire on Old Elm Street last night. It nearly burned down an entire house. There was a woman trapped inside with her baby." Maddie spoke quietly before her voice faded and she was left staring morosely at nothing, as though she herself were imagining being in such a position.

"…" Vlad didn't say anything. He had heard about the event, but didn't feel the need to tell Maddie this, should she feel it remiss of him to have kept it from her.

"They were saved, thank God, and rushed to the hospital. The baby had to be put on oxygen but I think they're both going to make a full recovery." Maddie sighed. Vlad regarded her face for a moment; she looked pained. Maddie, he thought, was such a compassionate soul that she would feel worry and empathy for a mother and child she didn't even know.

Jack though, was completely oblivious to her pain; and Vlad wished that, just for once, he could put his arm around her and comfort her—to be the support she would turn to, not that ignorant, idiotic buffoon Jack… But no, Vlad gave himself a mental shake. This was not the time for such thoughts. He would not let himself be clouded by his emotions. Anger would not benefit him now.

"… It is truly a most unfortunate grievance, and I am sure the city will do everything it can to compensate this poor woman and her child." Vlad said diplomatically, clasping his hands behind his back in a formal fashion.

"That's right, Vladdy! I knew you'd help any way you could!" Jack grinned widely.

"But Maddie," Vlad ignored Jack. "Why were you called down there—I imagine that's where you went, right? To the burned house?" At Maddie's nod, Vlad continued. "Why did the police call you there? Surely they don't want any unqualified ghost hunters snooping around their crime scene?" Here Vlad sent a sidelong glance at Jack. "I mean no offence." When he said this he looked at Maddie.

"That's fine, I know what you mean." Maddie shook her head. Vlad noticed how her fiery hair caught the light and swayed with the motion. "The police certainly have been giving us the cold shoulder recently. But we were asked to go there and do a basic scan for residual ecto-energies."

"They wanted to know if it was a ghost that set the fire." Vlad concluded.

"Yes." Maddie nodded.

"And was it—a ghost?" Vlad's eyes narrowed as he asked this question.

Maddie's face relaxed and she sighed. "No, thank goodness. There was no sign that a ghost had been anywhere in the area for, at the very least, a week. It appears as though it was just an accident, though the police are still investigating. It would've been much more complicated if it had been a vengeful spirit. At least that poor Mother won't have to worry about any evil manifestations coming after her or her child."

For some reason these last words seemed to rub Vlad the wrong way; but he let it slide off him. "Yes, that's right." He folded his arms loosely on his chest, laying his hands over his forearms.

"So Vladdy! How've you been hanging out here, just you and Danny? Hope you didn't have too much fun, Danny IS grounded after all." Jack winked at Vlad.

"Grounded?" Vlad echoed, real surprise showing on his face. He looked at Jack seriously for the first time. "What for?"

"Aaa… Umm…" Jack's grin faltered and he looked at Maddie. She looked away and then turned toward the kitchen. Maddie didn't want to talk about Danny, Jack realized. But her reasoning eluded him, Vlad was their friend, why should they hide things from him? "Well, he got into a little trouble at school…" Jack said, fidgeting nervously.

"What… kind of trouble?" Vlad raised an eyebrow, though he had a suspicion of what Jack was going to say.

"He started a fight with a boy and got into trouble." Jack said quickly, not looking Vlad in the eye, staring off somewhere to the side instead.

"Is _that _so?" Vlad said thoughtfully.

"But my boy is no trouble-maker!" Jack suddenly drew himself up and spoke with a passionate ferocity that took Vlad aback. "He's a good kid, I tell ya, and though he might get a little side-tracked sometimes he's always known right from wrong. I taught my son good values that he respects and lives by!" Jack's voice was thick with pride.

Vlad's face was completely blank. It was all he could do not to loose his temper and do something violent to the self-righteous fool. What did Jack know about Daniel? What? He didn't even have the presence of mind to realize that the child was half-ghost. Jack knew nothing. "I'm sure you did the best you could." Vlad said blandly, and he moved to walk by the other man, he didn't think he could stand to be in the same room as the self-righteous buffon for a second longer. "But I will do a much better job with him as _my _son." He murmured to himself.

"Didja say something Vlad?" Jack's voice, back to its normal oblivious happy-go-luckiness, floated up to Vlad.

"No, no!" Vlad made a dismissive gesture over his shoulder, not feeling up to turning and stretching his face into a false smile. "I didn't say a thing, old friend."

As Vlad and Jack entered the kitchen they saw Maddie pulling some salad and carrots out of the fridge looking displeased.

"Vlad, do you know where Danny is?" Maddie asked, pushing a stray piece of hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. "He was supposed to make dinner tonight…"

Vlad stopped and Maddie sent him a questioning glance. For a long moment nothing was said and as they locked gazes; Vlad let himself be lost Maddie's intense eyes of sapphire and amethyst.

She wasn't worried, not yet, but Vlad hated that he was going to be the one to make this woman's beautiful face twist with dismay and guilt. Because she would certainly blame herself for what happened to Danny; he knew her to well to think that she would do otherwise. And then, blinded by her emotional state, she may even blame him for everything that had happened.

And so, for a moment, he tried to think of any way he could possibly soften the blow for her: something that would make her pain less.

"Well, Maddie," Vlad looked her straight in the eyes as he spoke. "There were some problems in the lab—"

"What?! The lab?! What happened? Danny didn't mess the place up again, did he?" Jack interrupted loudly before racing out of the kitchen. Vlad and Maddie turned to watch his retreating form; and even when he was out of sight they could clearly hear his heavy, flat-footed steps as he thundered down the stairs into the lab. Vlad cursed Jack's tactlessness; couldn't he see that he and Maddie were having a serious conversation? Didn't that bumbling idiot have even the littlest notion of courtesy, of _common sense, _to stay out of their private chat?

"AH! NO! MY BEAUTIFUL LAB! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?!" Jack's dismayed moan carried all the way up the stairs and into the kitchen.

Now Maddie looked worried. She put the vegetables in her hands down on the counter and smoothly navigated herself around the counter. She whisked right by Vlad and then she too descended to the lower floor.

Vlad sighed and slowly turned, this was not how he'd planned dinner would go at all.

* * *

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* * *

Maddie stared with growing alarm at the absolute chaos before of her.

Tables and shelves were upturned with their contents strewn in shambles across the floor: papers were scattered out of order with vials of unknown chemicals broken and leaking over them causing irreparable damage. The once pristine metal plated walls and floor were now charred and burned with streaks of ugly black splattered across them, as though a young child had picked up a tub of black paint and thrown it on the walls in reckless abandon.

Dents and cracks twisted and contorted every surface in the room, giving the impression that someone had beaten them in with a wreaking ball.

Even the ceiling showed signed of damage, where a series of small, precise, triangular dents formed a straight line above their heads.

Vlad eyed the line of dents. That was where Danny's icicles had hit the ceiling and bounced off. It was impressive; Vlad knew the ceiling probably wasn't built as strongly as the titanium walls, but even so, to be able to dent metal with just ice… Impressive.

And of course, no one could miss the giant gaping hole in the wall—exposing live wires still hissing and sparking showers of red and gold—that took out an entire section of the lab and possibly did significant damage to the nearby Ghost Portal as well.

"My lab, my Ghost Portal…my Ghost Gabber…" Jack, cradling a chunk of warped metal, bemoaned the loss of one of his favourite gadgets. Vlad, remembering the thing as one of the man's most annoying creations, felt it was a fitting end to the blasted contraption.

"Vlad, what happened here? What's going on, and where's Danny? Is he alright?" Maddie's voice was shrill with worry as her eyes scanned the lab anxiously. When she didn't get an immediate answer she pinned Vlad with her eyes. "Vlad." She said slowly. "Where _is Danny?_"

Vlad, unable to even think straight while caught in that gaze, opened his mouth mindlessly—wanting to answer but not knowing if he should—when he was unexpectedly saved.

A deafening slam vibrated through the walls of the house as they all heard the front door of the house open explosively above them, ricochet off the wall behind it and close with a resounding bang.

"MOM! DAD! ARE YOU HOME?! DANNY? WHERE ARE YOU!? I NEED TO TALK WITH YOU _NOW_!"

Vlad gave a mental groan, cursing the timing of the intrusion.

"Jazz?" Maddie called toward the stairs loudly. "Jazz honey, we're in the lab, can you come down here for a second?"

In a few moments, Jazz's form became visible on the stairs as she quickly descended towards them.

"Mom, Dad!" She cried. "What are you doing down—" She broke off quite suddenly as she finally looked up and saw the lab. "_Oh_ my—what happened here? Was there a fight? Mom? What—" And then she saw Vlad. "You!" She yelled, her eyes widening.

Vlad raised a condescending eyebrow at this shorter, petite copy of young Maddie. Jasmine Fenton had never really impressed Vlad in the way Danny had. Spiting her physical resemblance to her mother, she was more arrogant, more cocksure and absurdly judgmental: a poor, faded, shadow of Maddie. Jasmine was also nothing short of devious; Vlad would not soon forget how she had even gone so far as to deceive him personally, just so she could steal from him. How crude. She'd inherited her lack of manners from Jack, certainly.

"Jasmine…" He intoned. "You haven't changed a bit, I see."

"And you've only gotten slimier." She snapped without so much as a pause. "Mom, what is he doing here? And what happened to the lab, and _where's Danny_?" Her voice grew higher in volume and hysteria as she spoke; and Vlad couldn't help but raise an eyebrow—wondering, quietly, what was causing this normally unflappable girl to act so out of control.

"Vlad was just about to tell us." Maddie said, her voice dangerously calm. Her eyes slid back to Vlad, giving him the unnerving feeling of someone looking into the eye of a violent storm.

"Jazzy-pants," Jack interrupted. "What's the matter? You seem upset."

Jack's thoughtless shift of concern sparked a sudden, inexplicable fire of anger in Vlad. Here they were talking about Daniel. Daniel, who for all Jack knew could be seriously hurt, and Jack was doting over his spoiled, attention-seeking daughter? Even though he was the one hesitating in telling Maddie what had happened to her son, even though he _knew _Jack was an idiot, this little display enraged Vlad.

What sort of a father disregarded the health and safety of one child for another—when the other was obviously safe? A poor father, a biased father—Vlad answered his own thoughts. Jack was obviously favouring Jasmine, had always favoured Jasmine, and Vlad wondered why he'd never noticed this before.

"No, no I'm fine." Jasmine waved her father's concern off. "What does _he _have to say?" She was too petty to even refer to Vlad by name, sending him angry little glances as though he was not worthy of her complete attention. Or maybe she was scared of him. Out of bland curiosity, Vlad caught Jasmine's eyes with his own and stared at her for a few seconds, the edge of his lip curling into a cold smirk. She fidgeted, suddenly insecure under his slighting eyes and after only a few moments broke off the eye-contact. Vlad gave an inward grin of smugness: he'd been right, she was sacred. She didn't have the courage to meet his gaze and stare at him in full defiance. Not like Daniel, who defied him openly at every step, every moment, unrelentingly, tenaciously, with the stubborn doggedness of a stalking jaguar.

Daniel was fiery, passionate and wilful; his thoughts were conveyed in his words with no filter in between. He lacked the ability to manipulate, to lie and be treacherous. The ability to think in such straight moral lines, to be able to see, clearly—even while everyone else was caught in a tangled mess of half-truths, lies and insecurity—was an admirable quality.

And perhaps, in some way, it was because Vlad knew that he himself did not posses this ability that made him want it all that more.

Maddie and Jack didn't notice the silent exchange between Vlad and Jazz, though Maddie had noticed Vlad's delayed response and was slowly forming an impatient crease between her eyebrows.

"There was a ghost attack." Vlad said at length, with the wary air of someone delivering news of a coming apocalypse. He eyed Maddie, who had gasped involuntarily. "And I did my best—"

"Danny, where's Danny? Is he alright?" Maddie asked frantically, raising her arms and clenching her hands around the air, as though grasping something invisible to her.

"He is fine." Vlad assured. "He's in his room—"

And Maddie was gone, blurring past him and passing up the stairs in the space of a few heartbeats. Jack looked back and forth between Maddie and Vlad, but eventually settled on Maddie and followed her up the stairs.

And then it was only Jazz and Vlad left in the room.

Silence fell, so thick it was nearly tangible in the air. Jazz glared and Vlad stared back with a mildly disdainful gaze.

"If my brother is hurt—" Jazz began.

"I assure you he will be fine; save perhaps for a nasty headache when he awakens." Vlad effused a tiny chuckle.

"Why don't you just get out of our lives and leave us in peace? Or are you really so pathetic that you don't even have a life outside of chasing women who don't want you and picking fights with little boys." Jazz said acerbically.

Vlad frowned, slowly growing irritated. "You would do well to mind your tongue—"

"And you would do well to mind your manners, Mr. Masters. Or you will find that Danny and my mom are not the only ones in the family who can fight." Jazz drew herself up proudly.

"If you are talking about your father then you are delusional, Jasmine. And I would have grossly overestimated your intelligence." Vlad mocked.

There was a metallic _click,_ something whirred to life, and the next thing Vlad knew he was staring down the barrel of an ectogun.

"You were saying?" Jazz asked, levelling the gun between his eyes; and Vlad could hear the smugness dripping off her voice.

Barely even sparing her a glance, Vlad calmly turned intangible—phasing through both the machine and her before shimmering back into existence behind the girl. Jazz shuddered as Vlad's spirit entered and exited her, leaving her with the unnerving feeling of having lost momentary control of her own body. She turned, suddenly very unsure of herself, and was greeted by the sight of Vlad straightening his already immaculate black suit. Jazz shivered, though not because she'd nearly been overshadowed: Vlad, with his long pale feature and formal suit, had much the same chilling air of an undertaker.

And to him, she was such a miniscule threat that he didn't even worry about turning his back to her.

"So, will you stand there shouting redundant threats at me or will you accompany me up to Daniel's room? Surely you are concerned over his state." Vlad was not facing her, so Jazz couldn't see the self-satisfied smirk that twisted his mouth. But it came through clearly in his tone.

Vlad left, striding from the room in long powerful steps, and Jazz had no choice but to follow.

* * *

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* * *

"So you saved him..." Maddie said slowly, for the third or fourth time, as though she still couldn't believe Vlad's words. They stood—Maddie, Jack, Jazz and Vlad—all crammed into Danny's small room in a tight semicircle around the bed, talking in quiet tones so as to not awaken the boy sleeping deeply under the covers.

"Of course he did! V-man was looking out for my son: blasting that ghost right back into the afterlife!" Jack gave Vlad a tight one-armed hug and, though he stiffened, Vlad forced himself not to shove Jack off him.

"Yes, I did my best to protect Daniel from the ghost. Unfortunately, he misfired his ectogun and hit the ghost portal before I could stop him." Vlad said smoothly, easing himself out of Jack's hold and taking a few steps away from the larger man.

"Well… Danny has never really taken to ghost hunting…" Maddie said quietly, still staring down at Danny's still form.

Vlad noticed the look and moved to stand to her, clasping his arms behind his back. "Yes, but the poor boy did his best—collapsed in exhaustion right after the ghost pulled out of his body. And it was a good thing I was able to get to him in time or that ghost might have…" Vlad allowed his words to trail off suggestively and then watched as Maddie's face paled. He wanted her to realize what he had supposedly done for Danny. If she knew and understood she would be thankful. And with gratitude came a gesture of appreciation…

"Vlad… I—thank—" Maddie's words were prematurely cut off.

"—But Vlad, I had no idea that a man like you even knew how to operate a ghost weapon. How on Earth did you manage to drive off that '_ghost_' all on your own?" Jazz spoke up strategically to interrupt her mother's words and to also let Vlad know exactly what she thought of his little story. She stretched the word 'ghost' with obvious sarcasm and sent a narrow glare at Vlad's back.

"My dear girl, I have many talents. Some of which you could only _guess._" Vlad's voice dropped at the end, heavy with implication; and it seemed that they were having a completely different conversation beneath the one their words conveyed.

"If you are so talented then why did this ghost manage to destroy half the lab before you could stop it?" Jazz raised an eyebrow.

But Maddie was only giving Vlad and Jazz's conversation part of her attention; the majority was reserved for Danny lying in front of her. Maddie watched quietly the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed and noted how pale he looked. His hair seemed even darker than normal as it splayed out on the pillow beneath his head. There were dark circles under his eyes and Maddie thought that he really did look exhausted.

But he had good reason to be, Vlad had said that a ghost had attacked and tried to possess Danny. Danny had fought the ghost enough for it to pull out, but had fallen unconscious. Vlad had then held off the ghost long enough for it to get disinterested and fly away. Maddie clenched one hand into a fist. She wished she'd been here. She wished she'd at least remembered to turn on the Ghost Shield… but no, it would do no good to blame herself. All she could do now was be thankful for Vlad protecting her son. And then she'd make sure this never happened again.

Danny shivered and a frown formed between his eyebrows. He twitched fitfully in the bed and one of his arms tried to jerk upward through the comforter. Instinctively Maddie brought one of her hands to his head and ran her fingers through his hair—just as she used to do when he was a small child.

And it seemed to help. At first Danny stiffened, face freezing in an unconscious look of disquiet. But then, gradually, he relaxed under her touch. The lines in his face smoothed and he gave a sigh, curling his head ever so slightly into her hand.

Maddie smiled a tiny, sad smile. When Danny had been younger, he'd loved it when she ran her fingers through his hair, brushing lightly against his scalp with her nails. But as he had grown into a teenager, he'd begun to withdraw more and more from her, and now they barely even spoke to each other.

She missed the closeness they used to have.

Covered from neck to toes in both a blanket and a comforter, Danny seemed very small and young at that moment and Maddie felt a heavy pull at her heart. Letting her gaze fall to the comforter around Danny's shoulders, Maddie traced the midnight blue curves with her eyes and her eyes stilled on the sparkling white stars scattered randomly across the material. The nostalgic feeling still foremost in her mind, she let her thoughts wander.

Danny wanted to become an astronaut. Maddie remembered vividly how every second thought of Danny's had seemed to revolve around the moon and the stars. He hadn't just had his head in the clouds, he'd gone beyond them: living in a world of abstracts and wild dreams that Maddie had never taken seriously, but had still harboured a quiet pride over. He'd had such determination to reach those fantastic dreams of his.

She remembered how he had come up to her—at a mere eight years of age—holding this very comforter up to her and exclaiming in outrage that 'they'd got it all wrong' and 'the stars were not in the right places'. And when she'd told him that all the little dots looked exactly the same he'd returned with a very convincing argument about the brightest star on the comforter and all the other stars' relative positions.

But recently… she hadn't heard him mention his dream even once. And he'd seemed quieter, more withdrawn, and now he was fighting in school.

What was happening to her Danny?

It was with some guilt that Maddie admitted that she was glad Danny hadn't been able to fight the ghost. He had never liked ghost hunting—had always despised how she and Jack fought against ghosts for a living. And it was because, in some ways, Maddie approved of this ideal that she never pushed Danny into ghost fighting. It was admirable to take a stand of pacifism; and Maddie didn't want to see this trait of her son's disappear as so many others seemed to be doing recently.

A hand reached out to encircle her shoulders and Maddie, recognizing Jack's familiar touch, leaned into him gratefully. Though her hand did not stray from Danny's hair.

"We'll get the ghost that did this, don't worry Madds." Jack said quietly, with the same undertone of passion in which he made all such comments.

Maddie smiled. "Yes." It was then, with Jack's comforting presence so near, that the negative thoughts seemed to dissipate from her mind. And Maddie remembered the conversation she and Danny had had just that morning. The maturity and patience Danny had shown then soothed her like a cool cloth washing away her worries.

Everything would be alright, she realized.

"Your touch must be truly magic, Maddie. You managed to quieten Daniel immediately." Maddie turned as Vlad's low voice interrupted her conversation with Jack. She did not fail to see how Vlad eyed Jack's arm around her. The thought of moving closer to Jack just to spite that look occurred to her, but Maddie did not want to further ignite the hostility between Vlad and her husband.

Though Jack would've probably remained oblivious.

Sighing, Maddie moved away from Jack, resolutely ignoring how Vlad's eyes curled upwards in satisfaction.

"You're sure Danny's fine, then?" She intoned quietly, not having the energy for all the drama.

"I am sure. He sustained no injuries from the fight. Though he may be a little shook up, understandably." Vlad answered, sparing a small glance down at Danny.

"I suppose then that you'll be staying for dinner." She didn't know why she was asking, since Vlad had already been invited to stay. Perhaps she was still hoping he would go back on the offer.

"Oh yes, speaking of which, my house is undergoing…renovations…and I am currently without residence…" Vlad trailed off suggestively with a look at Maddie.

"Well no friend of mine will be staying in some crummy hotel while I, Jack Fenton, have place in my home! You're welcome to stay as long as you like, Vladdie!" Jack grinned widely.

"But—" Jazz protested.

"I wouldn't want to impose," Vlad gave a tiny bow of his head. "What say you, Maddie?"

"That is fine." Maddie, waving a hand in the air listlessly. It really wasn't fine, but it would be rude to turn the man away now. "There is still some leftover stew in the fridge; I will get it ready."

"….Hey mom…" Jazz asked hesitantly. And something in her tone made Maddie turn.

"Yes, Jazz?"

"Can I stay up here with Danny…" Jazz looked at her imploringly. "Please? I just… I need…"

"That's fine, dear." Maddie gave her a gentle smile. "I'll bring your share up here." Walking closer to her daughter she reached up and put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "Don't worry too much. He'll be fine."

Jazz's gaze dropped and then moved to the side. "Yeah, I know… I just want to stay up here for a little while."

And Maddie understood. So she let her daughter be and moved to leave the room; but not before sending one last long look at Danny lying on the bed.

Jack followed her and—after sharing a long, tense look with Jazz—Vlad did too.

Jazz sighed and looked back down at her little brother. She opened her mouth to speak, but words lodged in her throat and stuck there. So instead, she grabbed a chair and spun it to rest near Danny's bed. She sat and intertwined her fingers tersely; her widened eyes speaking volumes in their helpless urgency while she herself could not.

* * *

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* * *

Hours had passed since Jazz had first taken up her vigil by Danny's side and she was slowly growing more and more panicked.

She knew something had happened between him and Vlad, but could not ask what since Vlad hadn't come back into the room and she was too scared to leave.

But she knew one thing; Danny was not asleep. Danny never slept this deeply—not since he became a ghost. It wasn't like that in the beginning, her brother had been a sleepwalker as a child and before his fourteenth birthday he could've slept through their parents blowing up the house and been none the wiser. Now, the slightest noises could rouse him into full awareness. It had become almost impossible to sneak up on him.

He was unconscious; which could only mean that he and Vlad had had a fight.

And he'd lost.

As much as this bothered Jazz, she could not dwell on it. Danny needed to wake up—needed to wake up _now_ because Sam and Tucker were in trouble and he was the only one who could help.

Turquoise eyes slid closed. And in the darkness behind her eyelids Jazz could see again that horrible moment in the museum when the doors had slammed shut, separating her from Tucker and Sam, trapping them in that room with God only knew what sort of monster.

She had ran. Helpless and knowing it, she had turned like a coward and ran. But though it shamed her, she could not fool herself into thinking she could save Sam and Tucker alone. And when Danny hadn't answered his phone she did the only thing she could think of—run.

As she had passed through long corridors and hallways, it had only occurred to her in a fleeting way that there was no one around her: no tourists, no guides, no one… but it hadn't meant much to her in her mad flight from the museum. Walls blurred and exhibits darkened and distorted into sinister shapes that had pursued her at the heels of her feet. And when she had reached the threshold of the museum a thunderous roar of wind had echoed from behind her: rushed up and hit her—grabbed her, screaming, right up into the air before throwing her from the museum.

And as she had placed her hands underneath herself, shoving against the grassy ground and tossing her hair out of her eyes, she'd looked back at the museum and was awed and horrified at what she saw.

A swirling miasma of sickly greens had congealed and condensed into a glowing dome around the museum. Rotating in a slow, mesmerizing pattern, the dome turned continuously, even as the drifting green haze within it seemed to eddy and churn in completely independent motions.

Jazz gaped as she slowly pulled herself to her feet. In spite of her better judgement, one of her hands rose, trembling, and brushed the dome gently.

A spark had raced between the dome and her fingers before they could contact and she'd jerked back with a startled gasp. The spark was reabsorbed into the dome, which gave a responding jiggle that reminded Jazz disturbingly of jello.

**_"You who posses neither the will nor mercy of Legion, do you come to offer your soul to the Abyss?" _**A deep voice seemed to rise from the very earth around her and resonated deep within Jazz's heart. It had left her momentarily breathless. But, not letting her wits scatter, she quickly forced herself to respond.

"I come to ask about two of my friends. They are within the museum. Please, they meant you no harm, let them go!" She had called desperately to the air, hoping the voice would hear her.

**_"The ones you seek are sacrifices offered to the Legion. They are under our contract and will not leave." _**The voice had intoned.

Jazz had felt the powerlessness rise within herself. How could she fight something she couldn't even see? "No! You have to let them go! They never offered themselves to you; they would have never willingly accepted that. You have no right to take them!"

**_"Who are you, petty human, to command Legion?"_** The voice had a tone of amusement to it, as though it mocked her conviction.

Jazz drew herself up. "My name is Jazz Fenton!" She'd exclaimed loudly.

There was silence for a few moments and Jazz had deflated slightly. She wondered if she'd said something wrong.

**_"I have a proposition for you, human." _**The voice suddenly spoke.

"Tell me!" Jazz had said eagerly.

**_"You, Jazz Fenton, will bring me the hybrid known as Danny Phantom. Only then will I consider releasing your companions." _**The voice spoke in a voice so coy it was almost a purr.

Jazz froze. How did this… voice, know her little brother? In a second she remembered Danny's trip to the museum, and that was when everything started to piece together. His weird behaviour, his reclusiveness, the wariness, even his fight with Dash… It had all happened after his trip to the museum! He must have met this thing… whatever it was, and it…fought Danny? Did something to Danny? Jazz didn't have enough information to answer that yet.

"What business do you have with him?" She had called out bravely.

A harsh breath of cold air had swept through her, rocking her back on her feet. Jazz had shivered, but refused to raise her arms and hug herself.

**_"If you want to see again your companions you will bring me Danny Phantom. That is all."_**

"What? No! Wait!" But though Jazz had yelled and called out, the voice had not returned and after awhile she had had no choice but to turn around and head home.

And now, as she stared down at her brother's still form lying on the bed she couldn't help but wonder what that voice—a ghost, it must have been a ghost—wanted with her little brother. What they all wanted with him, all the ghosts, they were all after Danny in one way or another. It made her feel…like there was a permanent vice around her heart, one that would clench up tight, then relax, only to clench up again right after without relief.

"Oh, Danny…" Jazz interlaced her fingers under her nose, stared at—through—Danny. At nothing in particular. The image of Sam and Tucker—caught, trapped who knows where, unable to escape—was stuck in her mind.

"What are we going to do?"

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It was very late when Jack, with some persuading from Vlad, finally coaxed a sleepy and protesting Jazz from her chair and lead her to her room.

Vlad had no idea why Jazz was being so stubborn. Perhaps it was in her character, but Vlad had a feeling that something more was bothering the girl. Putting it to the back of his mind—perhaps he would ponder on it later, when he didn't have any more pressing matters—Vlad focused his attention on the boy lying before him.

Danny still hadn't awoken. And though he assured Maddie it was normal, Vlad was beginning to feel a twinge of unease. It shouldn't be taking this long for a halfa of his endurance to wake up.

In the darkened room Vlad managed to locate Jazz's abandoned seat and took up the vigil where she'd left off. The dinner with Maddie had been nice, but there had remained a stale bitter taste in his mouth even after she had finally thanked him earnestly for 'saving' Daniel.

Vlad told himself though that it was only the overcooked stew that was causing him heartburn.

As wonderful as she was, cooking just wasn't on of Maddie's strengths.

Crossing his arms and crossing his legs, Vlad settled himself into Danny's rotating chair. With power enhanced eyes he looked around the boy's room.

It was a typical bedroom of a fourteen-year old: messy and disorganized with various personal affects strewn about in general disarray. The object of these affects though was unusual: posters of comets, stars, the sun and the moon were plastered across the room. A model of a plane was on the table—broken, but someone had taken great pains to glue it carefully back together—and a magazine sporting a picture of the Cape Canaveral space station on its cover was stuffed haphazardly into a shelf.

Vlad had been surprised when he'd found out that Danny's dream lay in the moon and stars. To become an astronaut was a relatively common dream—but for children, not teenagers. Danny was serious about his passion and reached for it even when it was a near impossible dream. Especially with his less than stellar grades.

But then the elder man supposed that this was common of Daniel. He seemed to have a talent for reaching for the impossible and grasping it by both hands. Really, this example was only one of many.

Vlad didn't know for how long he sat in Danny's chair, mulling over nothing in particular, but eventually he found his eyelids growing heavier. And it was with a long exhalation that his head finally drooped against his chest and he fell asleep.

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_Vlad awoke with a jerk and immediately scanned the room around him with narrow, suspicious eyes._

_When his gaze fell on a model plane sitting on a table he realized he was in Daniel's room and relaxed somewhat._

_After a few seconds though he tensed again and frowned._

_Something was wrong._

_He looked again at the plane and noticed that it was broken. But unlike before it wasn't repaired and the two halves lay, separate, next to each other. Vlad stared at the model for a moment._

_There was the sound of rustling fabric nearby and Vlad's head swivelled around._

_Danny was lying unconscious on the bed, shifting in a restless fashion._

_Vlad leaned in closer. At first glance, Danny appeared to be normal; but as he neared he could see there was a layer of sweat of the boy's forehead. Eyelids twitched and trembled from rapidly moving eyes and the teen's lips were parted, moving rapidly in the formation of words. But they were soundless, no air passed behind those words._

_Realizing the child was probably having a nightmare, Vlad reached out to shake the Danny's shoulder—but froze when a high pitched giggle sounded from behind him._

_Vlad spun around._

_"Who's there?" He barked into the darkness of the room. There was no answer and no movement. The room was empty save him and Daniel._

**_"You're facing the wrong direction, stupid."_**

_Vlad gasped and spun back around, one hand instinctively alighting in light ruby ectoplasm as he moved. But there was no one, no one except Daniel who was still unconscious on the bed._

_His ghostly power dying away, Vlad's eyebrows creased as he looked at Danny. The shadows in the room were strongest around his bed. Looking closer, his eyes widened as he realized that the darkness fell like a veil over the unconscious boy, and it was getting blacker by the moment._

_"Daniel," Vlad called. "Daniel!" His voice rose with urgency but he received no response from the teen. Rashly, Vlad stuck his hands through the hazy cloud and grabbed the boy's shoulders, shaking him hard._

_But Danny's head lolled to the side listlessly. He did not stir._

**_"He will not wake."_**

_Vlad growled, tightening his grip on Danny and standing over him. "Who are you?" He demanded._

**_"My, my, protective, aren't you? Up here."_**

_Vlad's head snapped upward and he let out an involuntary gasp._

_"Who—what are you?" Vlad gaped._

_The creature grinned. But its features, a cruel mockery of Daniel's own, stretched the expression impossibly, displaying two gleaming rows of filed, pointed teeth in a cavern of black, framed by a pasty, lipless mouth._

_Onyx eyes glittered with sadistic glee as it watched Vlad absorb its form._

_Colourless skin. Lank, stringy hair. Ripped rags sagging off emaciated limbs. Clawed fingers and those horrid, soulless eyes—the creature hanging from the ceiling looked nothing like Danny. And yet, there was something in it expression—some madness in its eyes— that reminded Vlad sharply of the look Daniel had had when he'd attacked him._

_"What **are **you?" Vlad repeated himself._

_If anything, the creature just widened that toothy grin on its face and then with a shout of laughter, it threw out its arms and fell from the ceiling._

_Vlad let out a muffled yell and back-pedalled. Catching his heel on the chair behind him, he lost his footing and fell. Not having let go off Danny, he dragged the boy down with him as he dropped—but somehow managed to get both of them out of the way as the creature plummeted from the ceiling._

_ Landing on all fours in a deep crouch like a cat, the creature splayed its clawed hands across the carpet, cocked its head. It bent its knees and lay so close to the ground that it still managed to look up and grin madly at Vlad's fallen form._

**_"I am the air you breathe. I am the fear that creeps in the shadow of the sun. I am the temptation that lurks in the heart of even the most pious man. I am the darkness in you. And I am the darkness… in him." _**_The creature crooned and reached out to Danny's unconscious figure in a way not dissimilar from a child reaching for their pet. Vlad pulled Danny away from the creature's groping fingers._

_There was a chilling laugh and Vlad looked up. The second he did, he felt his fingers clench on the air and, with a thrill of shock that ran like an ice-cube down his spin, he dropped his eyes to look at his hands._

_Danny was gone._

_Vlad snapped his head up to the creature and there Danny lay: flat on the ground at the thing's feet._

_The doppelganger, a twisted monster with features that repulsed him even as they mirrored Danny's, bent over the unconscious boy and looked closely at his face. It was a disturbing contrast, Danny's own youthful, healthy face contrasted against the creature's sunken, pasty face of melted wax._

**_"Such a beautiful soul. I am sure that even you know—the potential this child has, blasphemous Halfling though you may be."_**

_"You're one to talk about blasphemy." Vlad scowled, pulling himself to his feet. The creature didn't answer and the elder halfa grew perturbed at how intently it was looking at Danny. "Get away from him, you monster."_

**_"Monster? I am no monster." _**_The thing laughed. **"I am fact. And an inevitability. But think what you will. I have no interest in the likes of you; you served merely as temperance for my amusement. I grow bored with you now."**_

_Vlad called upon the power of his ghost half, igniting both his hands and pointed one flame-wreathed finger at the creature. "I will not warn you again. Step away from the boy."_

_The doppelganger looked at Vlad, studying him for a few long moments before grinning that awful grin. It raised its hands and stepping back. **"As you will. I will leave, for now." **It took a few steps back then lowered its hands. Tilting its head down, it looked up at Vlad with a sinister expression. Suddenly the tension in the room increased tenfold and Vlad had to fight a shiver as the aura around the creature grew remarkably more ominous. **"But remember, with brighter light comes an even darker shadow. You cannot protect him from himself."**_

_There was a pause. Then the creature added one last comment._

**_"Oh, and you may call me… Ahriman the Deceitful."_**

_And Vlad gasped as the world seemed to collapse onto itself._

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Vlad awoke with a sharp, backward jerk and stared around himself wildly. He was still sitting in Danny's rotating chair—though he'd nearly overbalanced it with his rude awakening—and it was dark. He tensed and nearly turned ghost right then and there. But as a subconscious gesture he ran his tongue over his top teeth and _felt_ the sensation. He relaxed. This was no dream.

A groan sounded from his right and Vlad looked over.

Danny, lying under all the blankets and covers in his bed, let out a breath of air and opened his eyes. Blinking, bright blue eyes were revealed and then quickly flickered over to him before widening–blinking once more in their incredulousness.

"Vlad?"

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_End Chapter 14_

_To Be Continued…_

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Alrighty! Hmm… was that a cliffhanger? Uh, ah, I guess it was…. I'm not sure though so maybe I'll stick around and see what you guys throw at me (plucks out umbrella and holds it in front of self). Oh this? This is just for insurance… 'cause y'know, fanfiction authors are cheap and can't afford those strong Plexiglas walls to hide behind (Ok, just realized I'm no longer making sense… that's a bad sign… usually means freaky plot twists are approaching… or that I need sleep XDD).

**SH Aerrow's Girl:** YAY! You're so awesome, I loved your review! I'm glad you like how I portray Danny and Vlad! Funny enough, Vlad's pretty hard to write 'cause I don't want him to be 'evil' per se… just a little obsessed XD. I don't really like it when Vlad's made into some evil sociopath because it just isn't really his character, you know? And I was a little worried that this story would be a little too…serious or creepy (;p) for the Danny Phantom universe, but I'm trying to keep everyone in character as much as possible. Hey you know, I've also always thought that Danny and Harry are awfully alike (though Voldemort's got a bit more evil on him than Vlad XD) it would be so cool if they met each other huh? (I'm a total crossover fan, though this story probably won't go that way lol). So I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Vlad's reaction and his conversation with Danny will be in the next chapter!

**xXAnimeKittenXx (**or is it **RenesmeeScarlet?): **Hee hee, yeah it was a little long wasn't it (sheepish grin). That seems to be a bad habit of mine. I take awhile to update, but when I do it's with long chapters. This was another long chapter, but I just couldn't help myself! XD I hope you liked it though!

**Agent Alto: **Thanks so much for three of your reviews! You're way too nice (grin). I have to say that I wasn't sure if I managed to pull off the 'scariness' in this story (I wanted to do it without going overboard into horror) so it's really great to hear that you thought I achieved it! And you know, really I don't think of it as 'torturing' my favourite character… I'm just making them go through intense character building experiences that will make them _grow_ and _mature_ as people… XD OK fine, so maybe it is torture, but I can't help it! It's just so much fun to make Danny go through stuff! XDD I know this chapter is a little late, but I hope you liked it nonetheless!

**MutantLover09: **(Munches on EvilCliffhanger Wheeties©) Huh? Oh! Where'd I get these? (rustles wheeties) well, you mentioned them and they sounded kinda interesting so I got myself some. And I hafta say they're quite yummy! XDD Anyways, yes, do tell me all the ideas you have about what you think will happen in the story, the plot and stuff! I love reading them; and who knows, you might actually give me ideas! :D And ah yes, Vlad. Hehe, like you, I like stories that make him a bit more complicated than just 'evil' or 'good'; and in this story I'll be exploring the relationship he has with Danny, which I personally enjoy (And, oh my goodness, VladxDanny stories are just wrong (…). So no worries, that'll never happen in this fic!). To answer your question, Vlad will play a role in this fic. I'm not sure how large, but he won't fall into the background. I'm glad you liked him (Yay! (Claps hands and jumps up and down) it took forever to decide how to portray him) hehe) and I fleshed him out in this chapter a little more so please tell me what you thought! Oh and no worries, my jokes are lamer (Danny's witty banter, oh goodness…(facepalm).) .

**Thunderstorm101: **Hehe (evil chuckle) looks like you'll have to wait just a _little _bit longer to find out what happened to Sam and Tucker! I promise though that there'll be more plot advancement in the next chapter! Hope you liked this update! Looks like Vlad's getting a little insight on what's been going on with Danny :D

**sciencefreak330: **Oh there's still quite a bit of that obsessive compulsive Vlad we all love to hate underneath that protective exterior XD I have to say, Vlad's just way too much fun to write! As for Sam and Tucker… well… I can't really say how they are, but there'll be more answers in the next chapter! :3

**Anonymous Shadow: **YAY! That's great that you liked the fight scene, that thing was a major pain to write XD I actually had to lie back and visualize the entire thing before even attempting to write it; then all these other details tried to worm their way in (like Vlad's cape, ha! Vlad needs a new cloak XD) and I was worried it was getting a bit confusing, heh. Anyways, this chapter was a little less plot-based, more character-analysing… hope you enjoyed!

**candidus-lupus-full Moon: **Oh wow, thank you so much for giving such high compliments! I think it's one of the best things to be told that my story creates visual images as you read it, and it really encourages me to keep working on this story (and put more effort into it!). So really? You read this entire thing at night? That's so awesome XD Scary is a genre that I haven't really explored so it's cool to hear that it made you jump :3 Hope you liked the chapter!

**Velvet Star: **Yeah, Vlad's a softy underneath it all, isn't he? XD Too bad he's got too many issues for it to show properly XP Funny, when I started this chapter I didn't plan on having Danny sleep the entire time and look what happened! XP Ah well, there was Vlad development, so I guess it was alright… More plot advancement in the next chapter!

**Yugisrose: **Ah! Sorry this chapter was late! I had some trouble writing the Vlad, Maddie, Jack and Jazz scenes (I dunno if they, all four of them, were ever in the same room at the same time in the show so I had nothing to draw on, hopefully I didn't throw them too far out of character XD). I hope you haven't forgotten the plot though, and that you liked the chapter!

**inukagome15: **Certainly leaving Danny alone with Vlad is a bad idea… but then again no one really seems to be able to get along with Vlad—except Jack. Ha!—in spite of his softer side (poor Vlad! XD). Well, Vlad didn't get to see the spot… but he did meet our resident creature-ghost thingy! I wonder what he'll say to Danny? (No really, I have no idea what they're gonna say to each other! XD)

**Souless Ace: **Hee hee, no problem, I'm just glad that you did review, and that you're enjoying the story! I find Vlad's character fascinating—though a little hard to write—he has the potential to be caring, but his issues always get in the way. I showed a little more of his character in this chapter, hope you liked!

**zizzy333: **Yes hehe (rubs hands together evilly). After this chapter the plot's going to start to pick up and then we'll _really _start to see what this story's all about! I can't wait! Honestly, I have all these ideas of what I want to happen and no time to write them! I wish they'd write themselves so I could just read 'em and edit 'em XD (too bad my brain can't be connected to the computer o.O'').

**Plain English: **Hiya! Yeah, I sometimes get bored of the two-dimensional Vlad that's always depicted in fics. I'm doing my best to keep him in-character while still giving him multiple facets. I added a little more of his character in this chapter (showing more of his obsessiveness) tell me what you thought! Also, I like Vlad-Danny interaction, so there'll probably be more of that to come ;p Hope you enjoyed!

**TexasDreamer01: **Awesome! Glad you liked it… now I hope you liked this one too! XD Danny's got some major problems, and so does Vlad and Jazz and Sam and Tucker and even Maddie! Gah! So much to keep track of! And I told myself I wouldn't make this story too complicated (snort). Ah well, tell me what you thought!

**Adio!**

**Sholay**


	15. Measure of Worth

**Hiya!**

Yeah… Sorry for the long delay in getting this out. My exams are coming up and I've… kinda… _kinda, _just a _little bit… _been neglecting my writing—terrible, I know.

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom and all related characters are the property of Butch Hartman. I suppose I don't own Star Wars either XD

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 15—**__Measure of Worth_

When Danny realized it was _Vlad _watching him so closely while he was lying flat on his bed, he immediately jerked upright and scuttled away as far back on the mattress as he could without falling off the other side. Stubbornly ignoring the blood rushing to his head and the odd lethargy in his limbs, Danny tensed his body and clenched his fists, glaring hard at the elder halfa. But when he looked at Vlad all he saw was a blur of white and black that made up the man's suit and hair. Disturbed by his blurry vision, but trying to not show it, the teen narrowed his eyes threateningly.

"Really, my boy." Vlad's voice came light and amicable, without a trace of the smarminess Danny had expected. "I'm not going to hurt you; you don't have to be afraid."

The world was still fuzzy, and in Danny's sleep muddled state he couldn't quite find the energy to be indignant at Vlad's words. Nonetheless, his body had tied itself up into a tense knot and the wariness remained. "Yeah," the teen grunted. "I remember you saying something like that when I woke up in that tube in your lab. Right before you electrocuted me."

"Nonsense, Daniel. I said no such thing." The use of his full name annoyed Danny, though not as much as the fact that he still couldn't make out the expression on Vlad's face. It was irritating to have not idea what the elder halfa was thinking.

Danny blinked then rubbed his eyes, trying to force them into clearer focus. "Oh, right, excuse me," he mumbled. "You said 'This won't hurt much'. Face it Vlad, you're not a very reassuring guy."

"And _you_ are not a very reassuring actor." Vlad's voice suddenly dropped and Danny stiffened, not being able to decipher what that tone meant.

"What are you talking about?" He said slowly, still rubbing the bridge of his nose. Honestly, he was not in the mood for one of these double-edged conversations right now. He was tired, he couldn't clearly remember what had happened to put him in this state—unconscious in his bed under _Vlad's_ nose, of all people—and he could already feel a headache forming under his fingers. Danny stopped rubbing. With a few more strong blinks the world finally began to come into sharper focus.

"I mean this." And Vlad's hand snaked out to curl around Danny's right shoulder. Danny let out a startled yelp and recoiled from the touch. Instinctively, his own left hand came up to cover his shoulder—to cover the _thing_ that was on his shoulder. His fingers wound themselves into the material of his T-shirt. The mark was still hidden.

"I knew it." The elder man said pensively. Danny didn't look up at him, instead focusing on the patterns stitched into his comforter. The haze in his eyes was almost gone: he could see the beginnings of _Delphinus _wrapped around his knee, a sight that reminded him of how he'd meticulously mapped out the constellations on this blanket as a child.

It was kind of silly, he thought, idly tracing the pattern with the hand that was not clasped around his shoulder. It was silly that he spent so much time chasing a dream he could never hope to achieve.

Why did he do that?

"I knew there was something wrong with your shoulder." Vlad's words brought Danny back to the present and his eyes moved away from the bedspread. Now that he could see the billionaire more clearly, he was able to note the serious lines drawn on the elder's face.

They locked gazes for a moment. But Danny—unused to being the object of such intense focus—quickly became unsettled by the older halfa scrutiny and he frowned, dropping his eyes to the buttons of Vlad's suit.

"What are you talking about?" Danny said, knowing he was repeating himself but unable to help it.

"There's something going on with you Daniel; something that's causing you to lose control of your rage and powers." Vlad leaned back in the rotating chair—_his _rotating chair, Danny noticed—and crossed his arms, smug satisfaction tugging at his lips. The elder man looked distinctly pleased at having figured out Danny's secret, an attitude that set the teen's teeth on edge.

"There's nothing wrong with me." Danny said forcefully. "And even if there was, it's not like I would tell _you_, you fruitloop."

Danny expected Vlad to get mad, get upset and loose his patience like he always did.

What he did not expect was for Vlad to suddenly lean forward, fold his arms on his knees and smirk. "Touché, little badger." The man conceded. "Nevertheless, there is _something_ wrong with you. And in the interest of _your _health, I advise you to confide your distress in someone. Perhaps those little friends of yours, or your busybody sister." A hand waved in the air dismissively. "Obviously it is too much to ask that you trust me right now." Was it just him or did Vlad sound regretful?

Vlad suddenly placed his palms flat on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. "I suggest though, that whatever you choose to do, you do it _soon_." He paused and looked at Danny in a pointed fashion. Danny just stared. "Because what happened today could very easily happen again. And next time I might not be there to stop you."

What happened…? Danny tried to remember: Vlad had said something—accused him of vandalizing his house?—and… and Danny had gotten angry. They'd fought and then… and then… Danny squinted his eyes, pressuring the darkness in his memory to recede.

His right hand gave a phantom twinge and Danny remembered. His arm, it had started to hurt. Then… he'd felt a great surge of power and…

Danny's eyes widened.

"The lab! The Ghost Portal!" He gasped, snapping his gaze to Vlad.

A smirk curled the edges of the man's lips. "Yes, you did quite a number on them, not to mention my cape." Vlad hesitated, but if he was expecting Danny to apologize for torching his cape he was sorely disappointed. Stroked a hand over his hair, Vlad hummed thoughtfully, patting down a spot where an invisible strand had come loose of his pristine ponytail.

"It is obvious that you've been stressed, Daniel. Whatever this problem is, it's causing you to act rashly, to make decisions without using your sense—"

"Gee, Vlad," Danny shot the man a twisted smirk. "When did you become such a psychologist?" He said sarcastically.

Vlad drew himself up. "I'll have you know, I have a number of talents about which you know absolutely nothing. I am a master fencer, for one; and I happen to be an excellent cook."

Danny thought his eyebrows would reach his hairline. "You? Cook?" He couldn't imagine Vlad even stepping foot into a kitchen, let alone touching a skillet. He seemed like the kind of man who loved having everything served to him on a silver platter.

Either that or he'd steal it.

"Yes, as a matter of fact." Vlad flattened the front of his suit, his spindly fingers pausing to shine one of the buttons. "In my youth I did not have all the financial assets of today and it was something of a necessity."

There passed a long silence and Danny revelled in it. He couldn't believe that he was actually having a _normal _conversation with his arch-enemy. Where were the insane plots? The ridiculous demands? The Vlad that was standing in front of him right now seemed almost… normal.

Almost as though he were reading Danny's mind, Vlad looked up at the younger boy with a sly smirk. "Oh, don't get the wrong idea, little badger." He raised a fine eyebrow. "I am only calling a truce for the moment; since picking a fight with a weak, defenseless child hardly seems worth my while. Besides, I had a nice dinner with Maddie so I am quite satisfied for tonight."

It was simply amazing how Vlad could make Danny go from mildly curious to raging mad in a matter of seconds. He glowered darkly but Vlad only looked amused.

"Oh and before I forget, you may want to exchange words with your sister." The elder halfa said blandly.

"Jazz?" Danny forsook anger for intrigue, just for a moment.

"Yes, she seemed quite anxious to talk with you." Vlad had a hand on the door and was already halfway out of the room. "Well, ta for now, Daniel. Don't worry, I might be leaving tomorrow, but you've proved that you can't handle yourself alone. I'll be sure to keep a closer eye on you from now on." And before the shocked teen could get another word in, Vlad had disappeared around the corner and passed out of view. Somewhere down the hall there came the sound of a door opening then closing with a quiet click as the older man entered the guest room. And then all was quiet.

After a few moments, Danny realized his mouth was open and closed it with a snap. Thinking about how he was going to have to sweep the whole house for bugs—_again_—made a low growl rise in his throat.

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Danny crept down the stairs.

Once he had fully awakened, he'd found, quite annoyingly, that he couldn't get back to sleep. After ten pointless minutes of tossing and turning—during which he'd rucked up the sheets and pulled them right off the mattress—Danny had had enough. Throwing the covers to the side, he shoved himself to his feet and made his way to the door.

It was dark, but Danny could see easily enough and he sidestepped his backpack that was lying haphazardly on the floor: books, paper and pencils spilling outward. A quick glance at his clock showed the time to be a few minutes past five in the morning. Danny wondered why he couldn't just lie back down on the bed and wait for sleep to come to him. He supposed that he was just so used to collapsing on the bed and falling asleep immediately after an exhaustive day of ghost hunting that he no longer had the patience to just lie around and wait for sleep. It was a strange thought that, coupled with the remembrance of how lazy most of his teachers thought he was, made him chuckle a little.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Danny could see that it wasn't quite as dark as he'd initially thought. Faint hues of pink and blue flittered in past the curtains of the family room… and diverged around a dark figure on the couch.

Danny did a double take. Yes, there was definitely someone sitting on the couch, but who? And at this hour? Danny's eyebrows rose.

'_Wait a minute_,' His brow furrowed. The figure's head was bent, resting in a pair of hands; long hair spilled over, hiding the face from view. In the dawn light, the hair glowed a soft pink, but in reality, Danny knew it was actually a fiery red. '_I know that hair.'_

"Jazz?" He called, softly.

His sister's head snapped up at the sound of his voice. Hair flying over her shoulder, she blinked and looked over at the stairs with wide eyes.

"Danny?" She said. Her voice was a loud whisper; but it lifted at the end in uncertainty.

Realizing she probably couldn't see him in the shadow of the stairs, Danny descended to the ground and walked into the family room.

"Hey, Jazz," He said, in the same, soft tone. One edge of his mouth crooked upward.

The next thing he knew, he was catching his sister in his arms as she threw herself at him in a flying tackle.

"Whoa! Hey, Jazz, what's wrong?" Danny cried in surprise and concern. The hug was not entirely unwelcome, but it was unexpected. As Jazz clutched at him, her chin rested on his shoulder and he couldn't see her face. Hands frozen midway between gripping his sister to hold her upright and embracing her back, he eventually decided on the later. Placing his hands lightly on her shoulders, Danny was alarmed to find out that she was trembling. "Jazz?" He asked again, with real worry now. "Jazz, what's wrong?"

"Oh Danny, you're alright, right?" Jazz leaned back out of the embrace and took Danny's face in her hands. "You're not hurt? You're fine?"

Danny stared. "…Yes. I'm fine…" He said, eyeing her tentatively. He knew she couldn't be this upset over him being hurt. It happened too often for this kind of extreme reaction.

"That's good, that's good," She looked away, drawing her hands together and interlacing her fingers. By the way she worried the inside of her lower lip and drew in a stilted breath, Danny knew she was trying to decide how to break some bad news to him.

"_Jazz_…" He drew out her name, and looked at his sister pointedly with hooded eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Danny!" Jazz suddenly blurted. "I knew it was a bad idea, I knew it! But I didn't say anything; I thought maybe it was no big deal and they—we—could handle it! But then it got out of control and I couldn't help and now they're gone and you were hurt and I didn't know what to do!" Jazz was rambling and Danny, though shocked by this unexpected confession, quickly moved to intervene once she took a breath. He knew that if he didn't interrupt her she would continue babbling endlessly.

"Jazz, Jazz!" He raised his hands and gestured at her to stop talking. When this didn't work, he grasped her by the upper arms. "Hey! Shh! Stop. Breathe." He watched her critically as she did what he asked. The breaths she drew in were a little shaky, but when she finally looked relatively calm, Danny continued. "Ok, now, tell me what's wrong."

"…" Jazz wrung her hands. "I'm sorry, Danny." She said again. Danny thought for a second to tell her to stop apologizing, but bit back the snappish comment before it could pass his teeth. "Sam, Tucker and I went to the museum today."

Blank silence was all that filled Danny's head for a long moment.

"You _**what**_**?!**" he cried a little too loudly and Jazz was the one who had to shush him this time.

"Sam had this theory that whatever was causing all the weird stuff to happen around town—Dash's cat, the burglaries—had come from the museum." Concentrating on giving a detailed explanation, Jazz seemed to calm down. When she paused, her next breath was steady. "She thought it would be fine if we checked it out on our own."

'_Yeah, because she's probably still upset with me.' _Danny thought with a pang of guilt; this guilt however, was not enough to stem his rising aggravation. "And you went along with this?" He couldn't help it when his strained voice came out somewhat accusing.

"I never knew it would be dangerous!" was her immediate riposte. Jazz's defensiveness quickly passed though and she ran her fingers over the lower half of her face in a self-calming gesture. Danny was rapidly loosing his temper and Jazz knew she had to remain level-headed for his sake and hers. "We thought it was just some minor ghost… You were grounded, and we thought that it would be safer to get it over with in the morning, instead of waiting for you to sneak out at night."

There were many, many things wrong with that statement and Danny had to clench his teeth to avoid saying something caustic. "What happened?" was what he said instead. His voice was low and controlled with the effort he was putting into not exploding.

"Sam and Tucker got… caught by whatever was in the museum." Jazz said quietly. Not willing to see the disappointment and distress that would be on her brother's face, she lowered her eyes.

And it was probably for the best, because it was not disappointment that crossed Danny's face in that moment.

It was fear.

A vision of sickly yellow eyes flashed across Danny's vision: shifting darkness, the helplessness of not being able to move; paralysis. Despair, pain and loss. Eyes; eyes that saw straight into his heart and _pulled _his life straight out of his mouth.

Danny swallowed, choked and had to gasp in a breath of air.

Jazz, still looking away from Danny and caught up in her own thoughts, didn't notice his suddenly arrested expression. "I managed to get out of the museum, but then this huge dome-shield came up around the museum. It—whatever it was—spoke to me. It said… it said it wanted me to bring _you_." Now Jazz looked up at her brother, silently asking for an explanation.

By this time, Danny had collected himself and, though his eyes were still a little too wide, he managed to push the vision of yellow eyes out of his thoughts. He licked his lips. "Well, then… Let's give it what it wants then, huh?"

Jazz looked like she was going to argue.

The fear had faded and—with the familiar need to stay strong for someone else—confidence returned to Danny. He shot his sister a cheeky grin. "C'mon, you think some dusty old museum ghost is gonna get the best of me?" He jabbed a thumb at himself in a show of arrogance.

And Jazz did seem to relax a little. A small smile shadowed her lips. "Don't get too cocky now, little brother." She reached out and ruffled his hair.

Playing along, Danny swatted at her hands and tried to duck away with an indignant 'Hey!' as his dark hair flopped into his eyes.

"Your hair's getting long again." Jazz said lightly, brushing back the bangs with her fingers.

Danny just smiled. "C'mon, let's go kick this ghost's butt back into history!" He said, striking a heroic pose.

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Your puns need work, little brother." She said.

"Oh, _my _puns need work?" He shot her a sly look, to which she just huffed. "Then how about this," he added. "Let's go make history!"

Jazz's eyelids fell half way. "That was worse."

"Then what if I just yell 'You're history!' when I fly at the guy?" Now Danny was just playing with Jazz. She laughed.

"Speaking of history," she said. "I heard you had an essay due in history class yesterday. How'd that go?"

The grin on Danny's face was replaced by a shifty expression. "Uhh… Yeah… It was… good?" Ideally, since he'd been suspended, he would have finished the paper and given it to Tucker to hand in. Unfortunately, that essay was the one piece of homework Danny had completely forgotten to do; not that he was going to let Jazz know that.

She was looking at him suspiciously though, so he thought it a good time to change the subject.

"Anyway! I'm goin' ghost!" And he thrust his hands into the air. With a flash of icy blue light and a swirl of energy, he was glowing with green eyes and floating two inches off the ground. "Here, hop on." He landed on the ground and showed his back to Jazz.

Jazz hesitated for a moment; usually when Danny took her flying he would hold her hand, letting her glide along the air beside him.

He looked back over his shoulder at her and seemed to understand what she was thinking. "It's faster this way," he said. "And it takes less energy if I carry you rather than making you fly next to me."

"Ah," Jazz still looked uncertain, but with a bit more prodding, she eventually put her arms around Danny's neck and clasped her hands together tightly. She was taller then him, but with his ghost enhanced strength he hefted her weight onto his back with ease. Shifting his arms and hooking his silver-gloved hands under her legs to hold them comfortably, Danny paused long enough to give Jazz a brief warning to hold on before shooting upward into the air.

Jazz gave an undignified squeak as Danny turned intangible mere inches from the ceiling and they flew upwards through the roof. Danny grinned, but held back in teasing his sister as he turned his eyes toward the horizon. The museum was far, and he couldn't fly at his top speed with his sister on his back, but he figured they could probably make it in twenty, thirty minutes tops.

As they skimmed through the air, flying high over houses and treetops, silence fell between the two siblings. Partially, it was due to the seriousness of the situation, but there was as an undertone of awe as they both stared at the scenery around them.

Jazz had never flown with Danny around dawn before; and whenever Danny was up at this hour he was usually too preoccupied with whatever ghost was trying to blast his head off to notice the scenery.

The sun peeked out between a layer of grey clouds, throwing long rays into the sky. Like the hand of Midas, everything the it touched turned to gold: clouds, trees and even rooftops were all basked in gleaming outlines.

Danny gazed at the sight appreciatively. Morning or night, the sky always held some magic for him. Above him, he knew his sister was feeling it as well.

Looking down, the halfa spotted the gleaming flagpole of Casper High. The towering metal rod was empty of its usual flag; a quiet reminder of the cruelty that had taken place there just a few days ago.

Pulling himself upright, Danny stagnated in the air. He glanced around, trying to visualize the road his class had taken to the museum that day of the fieldtrip. It was exasperating because he could remember exactly how long the ride had taken, what the bus driver had looked like, how the chair in front of him had had a huge rip down one side and even the colour of the gum Dash had tried to spit into his hair midway through the trip—but he could not, for the life of him, remember the _road _the bus had taken to the museum.

Honestly, he could fly; was it that much to ask for a sense of direction?

As though on cue, Jazz leaned forward over Danny's shoulder and pointed somewhere to the left. "That way." He could practically _hear _the smirk in her voice.

Danny gave a noncommittal grunt, leaned forward and started flying in the direction she had indicated.

His sister's giggles floated over to him, "How is it possible that you can _fly_ and _still _have such an abysmal sense of direction?"

Pointedly ignoring the fact that her words echoed his own thoughts, Danny fell into a swift barrel-roll, eliciting a short outcry from Jazz as she clung to him fearfully. As soon as he pulled out of the roll, she detached one of her hands long enough to smack her brother over the head indignantly, an act that did nothing to stop the younger boy's sniggering.

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When they arrived at the museum, Danny let Jazz jump off his back before flying upward.

"Stay here." He said, gesturing to the large trees that surrounded them.

"But—" Jazz protested.

"No Jazz," Danny said firmly as he frowned at her. "This thing is seriously dangerous. I don't want you getting hurt."

Jazz mirrored her brother's frown. "What about you? And it's partly my fault Sam and Tucker are in this mess so—"

"_Jazz_," Danny sighed. Seeing that this argument wasn't going to work, he opted for a more logical approach. "Look, I can handle this; and I need to find Sam and Tucker. I can't _do _that if I'm worrying about you too—and you know I will be." Danny added the last part when Jazz opened her mouth to protest.

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms in displeasure. Then, unexpectedly, Jazz's eyes lit up and a grin grew on her face.

Danny eyed his sister warily as he floated in mid-air. He didn't like that look.

"Okay…" She said. "I'll stay down here." That crafty look on her face did nothing to alleviate his concern.

"…And?" Danny prompted.

"Well," Jazz reached behind her back into a bag strapped to her waist. Danny blinked; he hadn't realized she was carrying anything. Jazz's hand withdrew and in her palm was a small, metallic, tubular device. With her index finger, she depressed a red button on the metal stick and two long beams light, encased in glowing green energy, grew from both ends of the device, extending almost a meter in either direction.

With the vaguely overeager air of someone who had practiced a lot for this moment, Jazz spun the rod nimbly in a few, quick rotations before pulling it behind her back and striking a cocky pose. She threw her head back, tossing her hair over one shoulder, and looked up at Danny with a grin that was almost smug. "I think I can handle myself."

Danny once again had to restrain himself from saying something cutting—something about how looking pretty and windmilling a flimsy Star Wars prop around like an overexcited cheerleader would be completely useless against a ghost—and he wondered where all his unusually snide mental commentary was coming from.

Instead he drew back in the air and shook his head. "Fine," he raked a hand through his hair, pushing back long white bangs. "But you're not coming up with me. Stay here and _stay hidden_. If I need help I'll signal for you."

Jazz shook her head. "I don't think so. You'll never ask for help. I'll stay here, but if _**I**_ think you need help, I'm coming after you."

"Fine, fine." Danny didn't have time for this; he'd just have to make sure he didn't need help.

Rising above the treetops, Danny hovered. For a moment he simply watched the glowing, swirling energies that made up the ghost-cum-human shield around the museum. There was no one gawking at the scene, no policemen barring the area off—everyone was too familiar with these kinds of occurrences in Amity Park. However… Danny looked at the sky, the sun had nearly risen. If he waited too long his parents would probably show up and, though Danny_ Phantom_ currently had a fragile truce with the Fentons, he wasn't willing to strain that relationship.

Danny flew over to the museum.

Hesitantly, the teen reached a hand down to the glowing dome—brushing it lightly with his gloved fingertips. The instant his hand touched the mass of energy there was a buzz and crackle: a spark of white lightning raced across the top of the shield and Danny recoiled.

But the lightning leapt outward, following him as he backed away. Surprised, he couldn't move away fast enough. As a last resort, he threw up his arms, the beginnings of an ectoplasmic shield forming in his hands. The lightning struck fast and hard, shattering the weak barrier like glass and exploding in a splinter of blinding light on Danny's arms. With a short outcry, he was thrown backward in the air, tumbling head over heels.

When he finally caught himself, Danny righted his body and tried to shake out the scrambled feeling in his head. He gave a few, short, pants of air then quickly pulled himself back together. The unusual hostility of the ghost shield had surprised him, but other than a light tingling in his arms and the fizzing static in his hair, he was fine.

Danny looked up through his bangs at the museum.

His fists clenched—alighted with spectral energy.

Sam and Tucker were in there, past that dome. He had to get to them. One way or another he was taking that shield down.

Danny had his hand raised, a battle cry ready on his lips and was split seconds away from rushing toward the museum when a deep booming voice halted him mid-step, catching him off-guard and scattering his thoughts.

"_**So you have come, misbegotten son of Sin."**_

_

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_End Chapter 15_

_To Be Continued…_

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Er… shorter chapter than the last one; but still, tell me what you thought! ;p

**SoullessAce:** Yay! That's awesome that you like all my mad psychoanalysing :D Sometimes I wonder if it's just me who's always over-dissecting a character's… er… character (XD). But yeah, it's good to know that I'm not the only one who likes to peek into Danny and Vlad's minds and figure out what makes them tick (It's _way_ too much fun ;p). So at any rate, more Danny-Vlad interaction and then some Danny-Jazz (I guess it's not really hard to figure out who my favourite characters in Danny Phantom are, eh? XD Although… I like Valerie too and she hasn't shown up much yet… ). At any rate, yeah, I do my best to add lots of details and such… I want to make it seem like the reader is 'in' the fic (does that make sense? o.O')

**zizzy333**: Ehehe, seriously, you'd think I was attached to my laptop, I never go anywhere without it XD… problem is it keeps FREEZING! AH! (Glares at virus-wrought PC) I guess it's my own fault for not getting a proper virus scan but Still! I thought my computer liked me more than this (sighs). Oh and when choosing between cleaning your room and updating… always update!! XD (Actually, it's a little creepy that you made that comment because at this moment my room is an absolute _mess… _and I'm updating o.O)

**Velvet Star: **Hey! Glad you liked it! I hope you enjoyed the Danny-Vlad interaction in this chapter. And of course, Danny's being heroic again and rushing after Sam and Tucker (rolls eyes). He's just _asking _for trouble, isn't he? But I guess that's what we love about him! ;p

**Nylah: **Heya! Yeah, Vlad has issues… and it's so much fun to poke and prod those issues XD I wanted to 'establish' his character in the last chapter so that I'd be free to play with him later ;p It's weird though, isn't it? Vlad's such a complex guy… yet he has such simple goals ^.^

**RenesmeeScarlet: **Okies! Glad you liked it!

**Thunderstorm101: **Hehe, I'm not sure if Vlad could ever be a 'complete' good guy (what with his incredible talents of wrapping concern and condescension all into one XD). But he certainly seems to care for Danny… And, truth be told, I'm not sure if Danny could handle another bad guy at this time xp Will Danny save Sam and Tucker? We'll have to see, but I will tell you that I'm a sucker for happy endings… yeah XD Not that this fic is ending anytime soon (shifty eyes).

**Yugisrose:** Yay! I'm glad you remembered the plotline! (I know, when you're reading lots of different fanfics they tend to jumble into one massive story in your head XD). Hope you liked the update!

**MutantLover09: **Hee hee, I'm glad I made your day. Your review certainly made mine, so the sentiment is definitely returned =D And YES! I love your Evil Cliffhanger Wheeties! Can't you tell?? ;p Ok… um… am I going to have to start running away now? xp Hehe, at any rate, yup, I enjoy your musings, they help avoid possible plot holes AND have an added bonus of making me break out into evil, maniacal laughter (Yeah… you know you write too much fanfiction when… XD). Also it's awesome that you like my analyses of Vlad and Jazz (cheers). I do love picking apart characters; but sometimes I wonder if I get a little long winded (looks at word count of story). Yeahhh… not long winded at ALL… XP. Oh and! For the suggestion you made, right, right, I didn't realize I said Vlad's name so many times in that chapter (sheepish grin). In general, I don't usually like to refer to the characters as descriptions like 'the blue-eyed boy' or 'the smarmy billionaire' just because… well, it's a personal tick I guess :3 However, I tried to make some variations in the pronouns in this chapter, is the repetitiveness a little less?

**jhl: **Heya! Thanks for reviewing! Here's the update, hope you enjoyed!

**TexasDreamer01: **Yeesss… Torturing Danny is FUN… a bit TOO much fun, methinks ;p It's an issue, I think, I have 'Bash-Your-Favourite-Character' syndrome or something xp… Ok YES I probably could have come up with a wittier name than that but I have exams next week and I'm tired (_cough_copout_cough_) XD

**If-I-Could-Write-500-Miles: **Hiya!! Hehe, how awesome is it that you reviewed right on the day that I'm updating? ^.^ I was just about to post when I checked my mail and found your review. I'm glad you liked the first chapter!! I hope you enjoy the rest of this massive manuscript thingy XD Tell me what you think once you finish! =D

**Adio!**


	16. The Stone

**Hiya!**

Hey all! Guess what? I relocated this semester… to France! Yay! XD Now honestly, I've been swamped in work and getting used to functioning in French 24/7. Not to mention this internet connection is as sketchy as it can possibly get (yay, wireless... *groans*). So this is the long and the short of things: I'm going to update as often as I can. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have time to respond to reviews for the next couple of months. I'm really sorry about that, but it just can't be avoided. I hope that won't discourage reviews though!

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom and all related characters are the property of Butch Hartman.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 16—**__The Stone_

Danny suppressed a shudder as the Hound's deep, resonating voice made his ears thrum.

He took a breath, reminded himself that Sam and Tucker needed him, and forgot his fear.

'_Sam… Tucker' c_lenching his hands into fists, the halfa looked up and around; he couldn't see his friends anywhere. There was only air, trees and the ghost shield in front of him. The Hound's—Legion's—voice had called out to him from nothing. The beast was nowhere in sight.

"You have my friends," he called, straightening his back and putting as much authority as he could into his voice. "Let them go!"

There was a pause, and Danny felt his anxiety rising. Legion was not going to answer… It was ignoring him. Danny grit his teeth and florescent green fire exploded around his fists. If that monster was going to ignore him then he'd just have to blast his way through the shield…

'_**No.'**_ This simple word, spoken in a tone that brooked no argument, made the teen stiffen. '_**They offered their blood over the altar of Legion. Their souls belong to us now.'**_

"Then I'll just TAKE them from you!" And with a yell, Danny charged the glowing dome.

Smoke and shadow filled his vision and Danny halted midflight with a gasp. The thick, nearly tangible, stuff entered his nose and mouth—congealing on his tongue with a sickly sweet, taste that stuck in his throat. Gagging, Danny fell backwards until he was free of the darkness and back in clean air.

With a great whooshing sound of air being drawn in, the hazy outline of a massive dog's head formed from the shadows. Danny's eyes widened and he froze before that familiar sight of teeth as long as his head, and a maw that pulled back into a fearsome grin. Instinctively, his gaze averted from the creature's eyes, but when he saw that the beast was only an apparition of smoke—hazy and almost transparent—Danny figured it would be safe to raise his eyes.

'_**Such a strong soul.' **_The low, fearsome voice that bypassed his ears to echo loudly in his mind, sounded almost blissful. '_**Just your proximity nearly allows us to leave our reliquary. Legion cannot wait to feast on such a soul.' **_The look the Hound sent Danny was one a starved lion gives a deer and the teen's face scrunched in revulsion.

"Jeez, now I know what a piece of steak feels like when Tucker's got it in his sights." Danny growled caustically to himself. Then, in a louder voice he addressed the monster "You! Hound, or Legion—whatever! Let Sam and Tucker go!"

The shadows twisted and writhed into each other as the Hound regarded Danny silently for a long moment.

'_**Tell me—you who exist as a very blasphemy against the natural order, son of Sin with a soul of diamond—tell me what you would give to free their souls.'**_

The question was unexpected and for a moment all Danny drew was a blank.

"Huh?"

'_**What would you give?'**_ Its tone was sly.

And then Danny felt a burning pain in his shoulder.

Dropping several feet in the air, the teen clasped a hand to his shoulder as he cried out in surprise.

"You—!" His words were cut off by a sharp intensification in the pain. He cringed, curling into himself. His eyes screwed themselves shut. One hand was curled tightly into the spot on his shoulder and the other was fisted in long, snowy-white locks.

'_**Bow to me,'**_ Legion ordered softly, looking down at the shivering half-ghost. '_**Give me your soul.'**_

'**Give in.'** A voice that was not Danny's and was not Legion's whispered coyly in the young halfa's ear.

'_No.'_ Danny refused. The pain increased, making his mind haze.

'**Give IN.'**

He felt his hands relax, against his will they began to lower, though he exerted all his will to stop them. He felt weak, and limp, though he was wound up tighter than a bow. His spin curved—

'_No!'_

A sharp crack split the air, followed by the piercing squeal of energy being released. Something flashed brightly—so intensely that Danny could see the backs of his eyelids light up—and then the beast screamed.

It was a plaintive howl, so bone-chilling—so _human_—that the hairs stood up on the back of Danny's neck.

Almost instantly, the pressure on Danny's mind and the pain in his shoulder died. Ignoring the sudden lethargy that seemed to grip his limbs, he wrenched his eyes open.

At first all he saw is shadow. Blinking, he realized that the Legion's dark tendrils of energy had, at some point, crossed the distance between himself and the beast. They had wrapped around him, embracing him.

Now, the darkness was receding. Danny was confused, but then he saw the crackling white energy and bright, lime-green ectoplasm hanging off the Hound in slimy globs. Someone had shot an ecto-weapon at the creature. The residual energy of the weapon was still sparking around the edges of the beast.

Then the realization of exactly _who _had shot the weapon hit Danny and his eyes widened in alarm, head snapping downward.

'_**Foolish human! You have made your last mistake. Be honoured in the knowledge that Legion themself will end your life today!'**_ Energy, darker than the purest black, and filthy, separated itself from Legion and shot toward the small, surprised looking redheaded figure on the ground.

"NO! JAZZ!" Danny screamed as he sped down toward his sister.

He was fast.

But Legion's attack had gotten a head start.

He wasn't going to make it.

"_Time Out!_"

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'_**So you have come, Master of Time.'**_

When Danny came to his senses, he nearly plummeted headfirst into the soil with the excess momentum he had built up. Disoriented and panicky, his head whipped back and forth as he looked all around himself.

"Jazz? JAZZ? Where are—" Then he caught sight of the ghost floating next to him, and his sister, who was standing—an expression of shock etched into her frozen features—and the teen's face split into a relieved grin.

"Clockwork!" He cried thankfully; he wanted to fly over and hug the ghost, but restrained himself. Once again the Time Master had stopped time to save his family. Danny didn't think words were enough to express how grateful he was.

"I have." Leaving the unharmed Jazz on the ground, Clockwork rose high into the air, his deep purple cloak swirling around his current body—that of an emaciated, withered old man. Danny, not wanting to be left behind, also flew upward, rising above the treetops to float at Clockwork's side as the elder ghost stared evenly at the monstrous dog's head. The brilliant blue sky was utterly void of clouds and Danny thought it was an odd contrast to the dark shadowy tentacles of the Hound, which slithered in lazy curls around the green dome that encased the museum. "It has been some time, Demon."

'_Demon?'_ Danny thought. He wondered if that was a category of life form, like humans and ghosts. Maybe that was why his ghost sense never went off around the beast…

'_**You have come to interfere in our work again, Ghost? You especially know the consequences of such actions.' **_Legion's voice was silky.

Danny looked between the two powerful beings: one a friend and the other an enemy. Did they know each other?

"I have come to give you a proposition." Clockwork answered blandly.

'_**Indeed?'**_ The beast's voice was vaguely curious.

"In return for the souls of this boy's friends, I will give you this." And from within the folds of his cloak Clockwork drew out what looked, to Danny, like a miniature star.

The star—upon closer inspection Danny realized it was actually a stone—glimmered brilliantly as it lay innocently in Clockwork's palm. Danny had never seen anything like it before. It was beautiful: colours of the rainbow and every shade in between radiated off the stone. Small crevasses gave the light dimension and the radiance seemed to rotate and shimmer seemingly of its accord.

Something about the stone made it look _alive _to Danny, and as much as he was drawn to it, it also caused a deep discomfort to look at its light.

The desire in the beast's eyes was palpable as its gaze latched onto the stone and stayed there. For a long time, it just stared at the gem Clockwork was holding. But then it tore its eyes away and a crafty look crossed its beastly features.

'_**We will take your offer. But with a few amendments.'**_ Clockwork didn't seem to be surprised by this and he nodded for the beast to continue. '_**The two souls in question spilled blood over the altar of Legion; therefore they are our possession. We will take your Shard, in return we promise no harm comes to the two souls while they are in our care.'**_ Danny was about to protest, but stopped when Clockwork raised a hand to silence him. Danny's mouth closed, but displeasure curled his lips.

"I will make no deal unless they're freedom is guaranteed." Clockwork said, and Danny's frown quickly smoothed away.

The beast seemed to think it over. It glanced at Danny, looking at the halfa in a way that made him fidget uncomfortably; then it looked back at Clockwork. '_**You protect this Halfling, so you must know the power his soul possesses.' **_Danny's brow scrunched in confusion. Was Legion talking about his ghost powers? He looked to Clockwork, but the other ghost's expression was closed.

'_**The boy will bring us **_**Jyoth pe Jyoth**_**. Only then will we release the two souls.'**_ Legion sounded smug.

"You ask a steep price for just two souls." Clockwork said carefully and shot Danny a warning glance when the teen bristled.

'_**We ask for a price that befits the capabilities of the giver.'**_ The Hound answered smoothly. '_**A lower price would suffice a lesser soul; but not his.'**_

"What you are asking is for the boy to hand you the world on a silver platter." There was an edge to Clockwork's voice and Danny's eyebrows shot up. "I will not allow that."

'_**It is not your decision to make.'**_ The sly tone was back and Danny suddenly had the unpleasant experience of having both Legion's and Clockwork's penetrating gazes on him. He felt like a window. Crossing his arms tightly, he looked away, wondering why he suddenly felt so vulnerable.

Why did he get the impression that these two knew some secret they weren't letting him in on?

'_**We are generous. He has until the solstice to complete his task. If he fails, my children will feast on his soul in the lightless night.'**_

Danny's eyes bulged. "WHAT?!" He yelled.

Clockwork sent Danny a fierce frown and the halfa spluttered noiselessly.

'_**Well, what say you, Master of Time?'**_ The beast asked pleasantly.

"As you said, Demon, it is not my choice to make." Clockwork said emotionlessly. Then the ghost turned to Danny, who felt that he'd lost circulation of his blood to his extremities. "Danny," He said solemnly. "This is the only way to get your friends back. Do you agree?"

Danny looked uncertainly at the elder ghost; but when the Clockwork nodded encouragingly, the teen gained confidence. He drew himself up, green eyes blazing with conviction, and stared fully into Legion's fearsome maw.

"I agree."

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Danny was flying back to Casper High with Jazz perched on his back, her long hair waving like a banner behind them.

"So now what?" She asked.

"Now… I'm going to drop you at the school." Danny said distractedly, his thoughts elsewhere. "Then I have to go see Clockwork."

"Ok, I get that he saved us from that freaky ghost dog, but why do you have to go see him now?" Jazz asked, confused. When Clockwork had taken his time freezing spell off his sister, Danny had had to relay to her what had happened between him, the Hound and the Master of Time. Naturally, he'd left out a few details.

Meaning: he'd told her that Clockwork had popped up out of nowhere, saved them, then disappeared again; period.

"He's going to tell me how to save Sam and Tucker." Danny answered. And this was true. After Danny had agreed to Legion's deal, the beast had withdrawn. Clockwork had told Danny to meet him in the Ghost Zone before teleporting away, leaving Danny with too many questions, but no answers, running around his head and a very disoriented, very _nosey _sister.

Jazz let a few minutes pass in silence before she suddenly gasped loudly. The sound startled Danny and he jerked in his flight, causing his sister to yelp and scramble to grab his shoulders.

"What? What?" He asked. Then, realizing there was no impending danger he rolled his eyes. "Darn it, Jazz, don't DO that without a good reason!"

"Good reason? _Good reason?_" Jazz's voice reached a weird, squeaky pitch that she only used when Danny did something stupid like forget to study for a test or do an assignment or something. He immediately ran through a repertoire of all his school-related events, searching for something that would explain his sister's wackier-than-usual behaviour. He'd done the homework Sam and Tucker brought for him, there weren't any tests coming up that he knew of, and he'd been suspended for the last two days so—

Then the realization hit Danny and he groaned. He knew exactly what his sister was going to say.

"Danny! You're off suspension today! It's your first day of school since Tuesday. You can't miss it otherwise all the teacher will—"

"_Jazz._" Danny's voice was low and forceful. "I don't have _time _to waste on going to school. I don't care what you say, but saving Sam and Tucker is infinitely more important than sleeping through Mr. Lancer's recitation of _A Midsummer Nightmare._"

Jazz automatically jumped in to correct him. "_A Midsummer Night's—_"

"_Whatever!_" Danny exclaimed. "Look, if I can get them out of that demon's grasp even one second earlier, it'll be worth it, ok? So just lay off my case and let me do what I have to do."

"…" Jazz looked at the back of her brother's head sadly. And Danny was irritated to realize that he could actually feel her pity seeping through the back of his head.

"It's the right thing to do. And I'm the one to do it. You know that." His tone was final and it ended the conversation.

Jazz kept looking down at her brother's head, wondering at the long strands of hair—usually pitch black, but now a vivid white—and thin shoulders that should not have been able to carry her weight, no matter how many pounds she'd lost on her latest diet.

"Yeah…" She sighed and looked down before closing her eyes.

Rooftops swept by underneath them as Danny flew invisibly through the city. Jazz tried to gaze downward, to watch all the people and cars wiz by, but the vertigo made her a little light-headed—which is turn made her wobble, and caused her stomach to lurch uncomfortably—so she refrained from that activity. Eventually, another question wormed its way into her head and she felt that it was a topic to important to ignore for the sake of awkward silence and tact.

"Why did Sam want to try and take on that ghost alone?"

She felt Danny physically tense.

"I don't know." Was his short, tight response.

"You had another fight with her, didn't you." She didn't even really need to ask, it was so obvious.

He gave a noncommittal grunt.

"Oh Danny," Jazz sighed. "Let me guess, you were trying to protect her and she 'took it the wrong way'."

"Of course she took it the wrong way!" Danny suddenly burst out. "She always does; and don't think I can't hear you putting air quotes around that." He grumbled.

"Danny…" Jazz knew her little brother didn't want to hear her advice, but she had to set him right about this. "Look, Sam is strong and independent—"

"I know that!" He interrupted.

"I know you do; now just listen to me. Sam is also still insecure. She's always trying to prove herself. Her parents don't accept who she is, she's not accepted by the girls at school and now you, one of her only friends, is telling her she's not good enough to stand at your side."

"I did not tell her that!" Danny sounded appalled at the very thought.

"But it was implied." Jazz tried to soften her tone, but the cutting words still made her brother flinch. "I think that for Tucker and Sam, ghost hunting has become a part of who they are—same as for you. How would you feel if some supped-up ghost-hunter came along and told you to take a hike because you were a liability?"

"Are you kidding? That would be great!" Danny said cheerfully. "Then I could take a break from all this."

"Would you _really _be happy? _Really?_" Jazz knew her brother too well not to have noticed the massive hero-complex he carried like a chip on his shoulder. "Someone else always showing you up, never letting you do anything on your own. Someone who treats you like a child just because they're a little stronger than you?"

There was a long silence; and then Danny's head drooped. "Man, Jazz, do you have to make me sound like such a jerk?" He asked sadly.

"I'm not trying to make you feel bad." She consoled, though her tone was firm. "I'm just telling you how Sam is probably feeling. It'd also help if you didn't just agree with her all the time."

"Huh?" Danny asked, confused. "Why? She's almost always right about stuff. And when I don't agree it's usually over something small; so it's not worth making a fuss over."

Jazz sighed and shook her head at her brother's cluelessness. "If you always agree, it makes the fights you DO have much more violent because you have all this built up tension and unresolved issues hanging over your heads."

Again, Danny lapsed into a thoughtful pause. "I guess… you're right." He said at length and, not having eyes on the back of his head, missed Jazz's momentary preening. "But I don't get why it all has to be so complicated… Why can't Sam accept that I want to protect her and leave it at that?"

"I think you know the answer to that." Jazz said pointedly.

Danny sighed. "I guess, I—Whoa!"

A sudden bolt of red energy whizzed by, passing Jazz's shoulder and Danny's arm by mere centimetres as the half-ghost took a sudden, violent turn to the left.

"GHOST!" Called an all too familiar voice, and Jazz looked up to see the Red Hunter hovering above them, aiming a massive gun in their direction. For a moment Jazz forgot they were invisible and cold fear gripped her heart. Her fingers curled into Danny's jumpsuit as she silently willed him to fly away so he wouldn't get hurt.

But after a second, the Hunter's gun swept away through the air and Jazz sagged in relief. "I KNOW YOU'RE HERE! SHOW YOURSELF!" The masked figure bellowed.

Jazz leaned downward, about to whisper something into Danny's ear when her younger brother suddenly took off, like an arrow released from a bow, speeding in the opposite direction from the hunter. Faster and faster, he accelerated so rapidly that Jazz unconsciously dug her nails into his shoulders.

"Are you Ok?!" Danny yelled over the rushing air as he jetted through the sky.

Jazz, hanging on for dear life, had to fight for the breath to answer. "**YEAH!**" She cried near his ear. Then, seeing his pained look at the volume of her voice, she spoke a little quieter. "I'm alright."

"Good! Then I'll let you down here."

"**Wha**_**aat**__?_" Jazz screamed as he dropped in an almost vertical nosedive toward the ground. Stomach in her throat, she knew Danny would never crash, but her eyes still squeezed shut as the ground rushed up to meet them.

When the semi-expected crash never happened, she cracked open her eyes gingerly. Danny had landed softly on the ground and was now gesturing at her to jump off, which she did. He was just about to speed off—most likely to face that Hunter—when Jazz reached out to stop him.

"Wait, Danny—" She started.

"Look," He said impatiently. "I have to—"

"I know," She interjected. "Just be careful, ok?" She couldn't help but worry.

Danny sent her a lopsided grin. " 'Course."

And with a swift gust of wind, he was gone.

Jazz sighed—taking a moment to stare at the rapidly disappearing speck in the air that was her brother—then turned her head. From the edge of the alley where she was standing, she could clearly see the entrance to Casper High. The last dregs of students were trickling through the doors. She could still make the second bell if she hurried.

But instead she just stood there. Thinking.

And after a few moments she turned on her heel and heading in the opposite direction.

She would loose her perfect attendance record, but it was like Danny had said: some things were just more important.

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"Hey Valerie, it's just me, Phantom. What are you—HEY!" For the second time, he had to do a quick scurry to avoid being hit with a laser. She'd shot at him! Twice!—though the first time didn't really count since she hadn't known it was him, he reasoned.

"What was that for?!" He yelled. "I thought we had a truce!" He didn't want to fight the girl, especially not now, while she was injured. Danny could see that Valerie's left arm was not in its sling, but it was hanging close to her body and she wasn't using it to brace her weapon.

"HAD is right, Ghost!" Valerie spat back from behind the imposing red visor that hid her face. Danny wished he knew who gave Valerie her new, deadly battle-suit, just so he give them a piece of his mind—and maybe ask them to make him one too.

"What? Why the sudden change?" Danny raised his hands up in a pacifying gesture then had to duck as a flash of red zipped over his head, singing a few hairs.

"Change?! I could ask you the same thing, Ghost!" Valerie said angrily. "You're the one who attacked me first!"

"Wait—what?" Danny gaped.

"Don't tell me you're trying to play the idiot now. You know very well what I'm talking about. Three nights ago you just show up out of the blue and start attacking me. What, has the recent drop in ghost activity got you bored so you have to start taking out your aggression on people? You useless jerk!" Valerie was practically steaming as she stood there on her board, but Danny was doing some quick mathematics.

Three nights ago—that was the night Dash's cat was hung. And Danny had come to the school to see if everyone was ok… That was the first day Valerie had shown up with her arm in a sling.

"Wait… Are you saying that _**I**_ sprained your arm?" Danny asked incredulously. There was not way he could've done that! He was always careful when he fought her. And besides, he' hadn't fought Valerie that night.

Valerie seemed to tense and Danny saw her twitch her left arm further out of his sight. "I don't know what you're talking about." She said defensively. "I'm just fine!"

Danny knew she was lying, but he didn't push it. "Look," he pleaded. "I'm telling the truth; I really _didn't _attack you. Val—"

"Don't you dare call me that!" And she sent off a volley of shots that had him tumbling through an impressive set of acrobatics as he avoided them mid-air. "I bet you're the one who's been robbing those stores. And you're probably to blame for Dash's cat! I'm gonna waste you, spook!" She screamed as she cocked her weapon once more.

Danny knew a blind rage when he saw one. There was no way he'd be able to get through to Valerie while she was like this. Plus, he didn't have time to fight her. He had to get to Clockwork.

So he turned tail and ran.

After a few seconds of invisible flight without hearing the sound of guns charging and being fired, the halfa chanced a look behind himself. Valerie was there, but she had fallen behind. It seemed like she was having trouble flying without jarring her injured arm. For the first time, Danny appreciated the fact that she was injured as he sped away.

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Danny was right on top of FentonWorks when he realized the Fenton Ghost Portal was out of commission.

Cursing his rotten luck, Danny hovered near the buzzing, neon sign that bore his name in fluorescent lights. He put a hand to his chin and squinted his eyes in thought.

He knew Vlad had a ghost portal in Wisconsin. But that was too far. Danny wondered if the man would have been obsessive enough to build one in his home in Amity Park.

'…_Yes he would.'_

In a few moments, Danny was standing in mid-air before Vlad's mansion. The house was huge and looked like something out of a mid 1800's movie with its wrought iron gates, numerous steepled roofs and arching windows. All it was missing were some ugly gargoyles perched on tall turrets to complete the gothic look.

Danny landed softly on the perfectly manicured, expansive lawn and looked around. He'd never been to this mansion before, but it strongly resembled Vlad's house in Wisconsin, a thought that made the teen wonder if the billionaire had ever rebuilt his old house.

Sniggering mischievously, Danny remembered how he'd tricked the Guys in White into demolishing the mansion. It might have been petty revenge, but that didn't take away from the fact that Vlad had totally deserved it after the cloning incident…

Quickly sobering, he looked up at the foreboding, wooden doors that were sunken into an arched formed of dark brick. He was going to guess that the lab was somewhere in the basement; so, without thinking too much about it, he turned intangible and flew into the house.

He hoped the elder halfa wasn't home.

The décor of the house was fitting for Vlad's personality—dark and sketchy with obvious indications of the man's obsessions. Everything was large and long: the ceiling reached upwards of two stories into a shadowy point. A long staircase, curved into the wall, was fashioned out of stained wood and polished to a shine. The furniture was luxurious and expensive; and of course, there was the ever present green and gold Packer's banners and the encased, priceless football signed by the team.

Danny tsked, shaking his head. He wondered what Vlad would do if he took that football. But, deciding that dealing with the resulting tantrum probably wouldn't be worth the laugh he'd get out of infuriating the man, he shrugged the idea away.

A low hiss caught his attention and Danny whirled to the side, expecting to see the older man standing there, a charged weapon ready in his hands.

But instead, Danny saw a rather fat, white cat standing to attention on one of the armrests as it eyed him with suspicious blue eyes and a poofy tail.

Humour rose up in the teen's throat and threatened to spill out in uncontrollable laughter. When the cat yawned, deeming him safe, and curled back up on the cushion with a smug mewl to take a nap, Danny lost his control and bent over, clutching his sides as he roared with laughter.

It took many minutes before he could calm down enough to wipe the tears from his eyes. Once he was sure he had mastered himself, he gave the cat a soft pat on the head and was unable to stifle a giggle when it responded with an adorable merp. Shaking his head, Danny turned back to his search.

Finding the laboratory was easier than the young halfa had expected it to be. He merely phased through a few floors and abruptly found himself in a room of metal and wires. Not bothering with the lights, the teen created a glowing ball of green energy and let it hang somewhere over his shoulder. The flickering light cast eerie shadows over the ground, dancing around the bright edges of metal tables and mutating into weird shapes as it lit up beakers filled with unknown fluids. Danny ignored all this and made his way further into the dark room, his white hair haloed in supernatural energy.

Rising from the shadows, the ghost-light suddenly illuminated a tall, empty tube. Danny stared at it for a minute, shuddered at the memories that surfaced, then forcibly tore his eyes away and continued on.

Finally, he reached the other end of the room and there, depressed into the wall, was a very familiar tubular device.

Danny let of a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and grinned.

Heading over to the console, the teen leaned over the complex buttons and dials, bringing his ball of energy closer with an idle beckoning of his hand.

With the practiced ease that only came from being the son of two brilliant inventors, Danny started up the console and let his fingers fly over the colourful array of knobs and buttons. It wasn't all that different from his parent's ghost portal. In fact, it was _too _similar. Danny frowned. Yet another thing Vlad had probably stolen from his parents.

_INPUT PASSWORD_

"Huh…" Green eyes squinted in annoyance as Danny's breath left barely parted lips in a swift whoosh; his hands hung suspended over the keypad as his mind flew over all the possibilities. He had no idea what Vlad's birthday was… He thought about the cat he'd seen, but had no idea what its name was. He thought about putting his own name in, but that felt too egotistical—not to mention disturbing—so he refrained. The Packer's crossed his mind… But then a final thought popped up and Danny knew.

Swallowing, wishing he was wrong—yet knowing he wasn't—Danny typed in '_Maddie Masters'._

_PASSWORD ACCEPTED_

"Fruitloop." Danny puffed out between clenched teeth.

"_Welcome home honey, what can I do for you today?"_

Danny yelped and spun around—back slamming harshly into the edge of the control panel—at the completely unexpected sound of his mother's voice. When he saw what had made the sound, his jaw fell open and his eyes opened impossibly wide.

A transparent, holographic image of Maddie Fenton smiled sweetly at a spot over Danny's head.

'_That—that—'_ Danny spluttered in his head. There were absolutely no words to describe his feelings towards Vlad's insanity at the moment. His mind was too busy screaming incoherently.

'_Trying to clone me is one thing, but creating a holographic image of Mom to do his every bidding?!...EW! GROSS!' _Danny wished he could un-see this.

"_Is there something wrong, honey?" _The fake Maddie asked and Danny cringed at the look of concern that came across her face. It looked an awful lot like his mother, and he did NOT want to know how Vlad managed to create such a close likeness.

Licking his lips, Danny decided to get this thing over with and leave before he could get even _more _scarred, if that were possible. Figuring he didn't want to chance responding out loud—Vlad probably had some voice-analyzing device—Danny walked over to the console and typed in the input to open the ghost portal.

The hologram broke out into a smile that was entirely too cheery. "_Sure thing, sweetie!" _Danny gagged.

When the ghost portal opened Danny raced through it so fast he probably strained the sound barrier.

And a little red light blinked away innocently in a high corner of the room, recording everything.

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_End Chapter 16_

_To Be Continued…_

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Okies! So… yeah, it's been awhile, hasn't it? I hope this update made up for that ^.^'

Now, as most of you will notice: this is the spot where I usually answer reviews. Unfortunately, from now until April (when I leave France) I'm not going to have the time to do this (not to mention that just accessing my e-mail can take anywhere from 2 minutes to an hour O_O (and that's when I HAVE an internet connection).); again, I'm sorry but I hope you will continue to review. I love reading all your comments and they really motivate me when I get stuck!

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed!**

**Adio!**

Oh yes! And bonus cookies go to the reviewer who can tell me what language '_Jyoth pe Jyoth'_ is (or _jyot pe jyot,_ if you like) AND what it means! ^.^


	17. Jyoth pe Jyoth

**Hiya!**

So… it's been a little while hasn't it? (sheepish grin) Sorry 'bout the wait, guys…

Oh! **Congrats** and special cyber cookies (they automatically change to your favourite type! :3) to **Nylah **for correctly guessing that _"Jyoth pe Jyoth" _is Hindi and **perpetuallyconfused **for pinning down the meaning! You guys are awesome ^.^ And to **perpetuallyconfused**… hmm… I'm not sure if the words are Sanskrit… It's possible; they might very well be. After all it's a root language for Hindi, right? You were pretty much right with the writing, though I think there was an extra 'i' sound at the end, or something…

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom and all related characters are the property of Butch Hartman. Er... I also don't own 'The Silence of the Lambs'

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 17—**__Jyoth pe Jyoth_

Mr. Lancer entered his morning homeroom class, shutting the door behind himself and straightening his shirt convulsively before turning to face his students. Blank eyes and sleepy yawns met his gaze and the middle-aged teacher inwardly sighed. It was difficult enough to gain the class' attention on the best of days, but on Fridays it was an absolute exercise in futility.

He would have to put on his old cheerleading outfit and do cartwheels to pull even a modicum of interest from their vapid expressions.

Nonetheless, he persisted, sweeping a hand over a prematurely balding head and sending a stern look at the class before swiping up his register with extra gusto.

"Dash Baxter." He called, and was met with a half-hearted grunt from the teen.

As Mr. Lancer continued the roll call the volume of chatter in the room gradually grew. After fifteen years of teaching, the man knew it was pointless to even try to quell the noise, so he just raised his voice and continued.

Reading down the list, Lancer soon reached the 'F's and the name 'Daniel Fenton' leapt up from the page at him.

For the past two days, the teacher had quietly omitted Danny's name from the register, trying, in vain, to stifle some of the gossip surrounding the wayward teen. But today was Danny's first day back at school; so when Mr. Lancer spoke the boy's name he looked up expectantly, searching for the familiar mop of messy black hair.

Silence met his call and Mr. Lancer frowned, searching the sea of faces with his eyes.

"Daniel Fenton?"

No answer.

The entire class had quietened at Danny's name, now the murmurs blossomed anew. From the corner of his eye, Mr. Lancer saw Dash Baxter lean back arrogantly, a sly smirk on his face as he gloated to his friends about how he'd pounded 'Fentoad' so bad he was afraid to come back to school. Other students were leaning towards each other, whispering excitedly behind their hands.

"_Where do you think he is?"_

"_Maybe he got into another fight."_

"_You think he got suspended again?"_

"_Maybe he's in prison!"_

"Class! CLASS! _The Silence of the Lambs! _QUIETEN DOWN EVERYONE!" Mr. Lancer bellowed so loudly his voice rang off the walls. Shocked into silence, the students blinked dumbly at their red-faced teacher.

Knowing the quiet wouldn't last, Mr. Lancer just calmed his erratic breathing and moved on to the next name, doing his best to pretend like nothing unusual had happened.

In truth, he wasn't so much angry about Danny's absence as he was disappointed. He'd given the boy a second chance—even after that disturbing incident with Dash—and he'd really been hoping Danny would live up to his expectations. Unfortunately, it looked like the boy was slipping back into his old habits.

"Tucker Foley" Was the next name Mr. Lancer called.

Again, his only response was silence and Mr. Lancer, smelling something amiss, searched the classroom with narrowed eyes.

It seemed that Samantha Manson was also inexplicably absent, making it three for three.

It wasn't uncommon for Danny to miss school, in fact—exempting the last few weeks—the boy had been late more often than he'd been on time. But while Danny was always stumbling in with some feeble excuse, it was quite unusual for Sam Manson and Tucker Foley to be absent.

Well, at any rate, Mr. Lancer flicked his papers, he would have to make a call to their parents. And maybe a few hours of detention would straighten those kids out.

He could only hope.

"Valerie Gray." He called.

The classroom door abruptly burst open.

"I'm here!" Valerie, panting and, blushing with embarrassment, dropped her eyes from Mr. Lancer's as she shut the door behind herself. "Dad had car trouble." She muttered by way of excuse as she made her way to her seat.

"Note?" Mr. Lancer asked, raising an eyebrow. He already knew her answer though and when she shook her head, he simply gave a curt nod. "Detention, Miss Gray. After school."

Valerie looked resigned, but she made no argument as she lowered herself into her desk, taking care not to bump her sprained arm.

At the end of homeroom, while everyone streamed out through the door, Mr. Lancer looked up to see Valerie lagging behind as she struggled to adjust her backpack around her left arm. Upon closer inspection, he noticed some other things about the girl that he'd previously overlooked: she seemed harried and there were lines of strain around her face. She looked tired. Remembering the difficulties she had already gone through this year—with her father loosing his job and the family fortune, this sprained arm was only the latest in a rash of unlucky event to befall the girl—Mr. Lancer's expression softened in sympathy.

"Do you need some help, Miss Gray?" He asked affably.

Valerie looked surprised for a moment but quickly gave a small smile and shook her head. "I got it." She said as she stabilized the pack.

Mr. Lancer hesitated a moment, then asked another question. "Miss Grey, I don't suppose you saw Mr. Fenton, Ms. Manson or Mr. Foley while you were playing truant earlier?"

Valerie's head shot up. "No…" She replied. "I didn't. All three of them are absent? But… Danny… it's his first day back after his suspension, isn't it?" She sounded worried.

Mr. Lancer sighed.

By second period, Mr. Lancer had realized that Jasmine Fenton was also mysteriously absent from school. Having some free time during lunch after downing his homemade sandwich in two bites, he decided to make those telephone calls sooner than expected.

* * *

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* * *

Jazz had been expecting the phone call, but that made her no less nervous when it finally came.

"Hello?" She spoke into the receiver.

"Oh, hello Mr. Lancer. Yes, I know, Danny and I weren't in classes today. Actually, Sam and Tucker were here yesterday and they stayed over so long they ended up staying the night… yes, on a school night." Here she inserted just enough exasperation, as though the situation annoyed her as well. "Anyway, when they woke up today they, all three, were doubled over with stomach aches and nausea. My parents had already left for work so I decided to stay home and look after them. I mean, they can barely move. They're all lying flat on the couches." She finished with a little laugh which sounded much too high pitched for her liking.

Fortunately, her reputation held. Mr. Lancer believed her, no questions asked, and after convincing the teacher that he didn't need to call Tucker or Sam's parents—that it would just be a waste of his time— she exchanged a few pleasantries with him before finally hanging up the phone with a grateful sigh, leaning her forehead on the wooden cupboards near her head.

Later she'd call the Foleys and the Mansons, telling them Tucker and Sam would be staying over for the weekend. She wouldn't tell her own parents anything and hopefully her threads of lies would never meet. Sam's parents certainly won't be very happy, but the girl had stayed over so many nights _without _their permission that they'd probably just be grateful Jazz was calling them.

It would buy Danny some time.

Hopefully that would be enough.

* * *

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* * *

It was the most uneventful trip through the Ghost Zone that Danny had every taken. He'd yet to be attacked, threatened or even tackled unexpectedly by ghosts wanting to be his friends.

The Ghost Zone was empty. Desolate.

Gliding through the endless green miasma that made up the ghost world, Danny ran his thumbs over his silver-gloved fingers as his gaze was caught by yet another floating purple door. Suspended on nothing and seemingly leading to nothing, the door bobbed up and down slowly, inviting Danny to open it.

But the half-ghost just turned away and kept flying. He already knew that the door would only lead him to another empty room, another empty lair of a ghost who had fled to who-knows-where for who-knew-what reason.

This continued, inexplicable absence of all ghost-life bothered Danny. However, he had a much more important issue to deal with first.

A shadow loomed in the distance and, with a sharp exhalation of relief, Danny sped up his flight toward it.

As the Master of Time, it was only fitting that Clockwork would live in a giant clock tower.

Ornate and somewhat medieval-looking, the black tower was had long, curved windows and a wide stone staircase that Danny was certain had only been built for show. High up, near the steepled point of the tower, was a giant clock with fancy, dusty black hands. It showed a time that was nowhere near correct by real-world convention, making Danny wonder briefly how ghosts even viewed the passage of time.

The interior of the building was no less elaborate than the exterior. As Danny let himself into the building, he spared a glance at the sculpted archways and detail etchings. Towering above him, held up by nothing and powered by no source, were the giant gears and inner workings of the clock: turning, clicking and rotating with a constant grinding sound of wood on wood.

Danny remembered how the endless, hollow sounds that echoed and re-echoed off the walls had once creeped him out. The physics of a floating castle floating in the middle of nowhere, with a working clock and gears that turned of their own accord were somewhat mind-boggling. But then again, most aspects about Danny's life were pretty far off the beaten path. He'd long since learned to deal by stuffing all those impossible facts in a little mental box he fondly referred to as 'The Consequences of Being a Fenton'.

Landing softly on one of the large stone blocks that made up the ground, Danny blinked luminous green eyes and looked up, searching the shadows.

"Clockwork! Are you there?" A terrible thought struck him, what if his old friend had left the Ghost Zone—gone to whatever place all the other ghosts had disappeared to?

A lopsided, relieved grin broke out on Danny's face as the Time Master suddenly materialized before him. Cloaked in his familiar purple robe, the ghost had taken on the form of an old man.

"Danny… Very good, you're just on time."

Danny's grin faded into a wry smirk. "I guess so." He said, wondering silently if it was even possible to be late when visiting a ghost who could very literally see the future.

"We have many things to talk about, young half-ghost." Clockwork's voice was grave, immediately sobering Danny's own mood.

"Yeah…" Danny's eyes lowered as he thought of Sam and Tucker but he quickly shook off his self-doubt and put aside his guilt. That could wait. Resolve hardening his expression, Danny looked up at Clockwork. "I have to save them. Legion… it wants some stones, or crystals, whatever. Where can I find them?"

"Hold, young one." Clockwork shifted into the form of a young child and raised a gloved hand, abating the teen's impatience. "To get to the end we must first start at the beginning."

"The beginning?" Danny's brow furrowed as he shifted on his feet. "What beginning? I don't have time for some long-winded story right now!"

Clockwork, now a middle-aged man, tilted his head and he gave Danny such a reproving stare that the boy flushed in embarrassment.

"Sorry," Danny apologized, ducking his head. "I—I just…" He closed his eyes and took a calming breath as the elder ghost waited tolerantly for him to continue. "Okay," Danny relented, taking a moment to think. His eyes reopened. "I guess, you mean Legion's beginning?"

"Yes," Clockwork sounded pleased and Danny gave a small smile, feeling the reciprocating pride at having gotten the right answer. The Time Master turned away and, from a nearby table, picked up a long sceptre crowned by a glowing clock. The ghost's appearance was now continuously shifting—from youth to man to elderly to man to youth to child to youth—Danny found it difficult to concentrate on Clockwork's words as his shape-shifting was giving the halfa a headache.

Nonetheless, when Clockwork continued speaking, Danny forced his attention on to the words. "You probably remember the story of Legion: the monstrosity created when one man allowed an army of demons to enter his body." Danny nodded slowly, it sounded familiar. "Indeed, all legends take root in some truth. Legion, though not a single, specific being, does exist through various physical manifestations. That Hound which you saw is one of them, neither living nor a ghost."

Danny looked confused but didn't ask any questions as Clockwork continued speaking "A ghost is, essentially, a human spirit—or soul—tied down by the lingering regrets and sins caused during life. But Legion… Legion is not any one creature. It is a collection of many spirits: the spirits of men, women and children all melded together to form one entity." The ghost swept his staff over the mirror and immediately the face turned from a milky white to smoky grey before burning complete black.

Screams of pain filled Danny's head, making his knees buckle and his hands clamp down on his ears. It was no use though, the tortured screams continued to pound in his head, tearing into his mind until he was crying out with them.

From the depths of the dark mirror, a wisp of grey appeared. The figure took the shape of a woman's face, so contorted with agony that Danny's own heart constricted at the sight. A hand, the woman's hand, emerged from the black, reaching out to him, begging for his help and, without even realizing it, Danny's own hand reached out toward hers.

Suddenly the screams stopped, the mirror cleared, and Danny fell forward onto his hands and knees—shaking—panting with exertion and feeling like his entire body had just been released from some horrible vice.

"The spirits that make up Legion are doomed to spent eternity drowning in endless torment. Their only desire is to ensnare more hapless souls to join in their suffering. The state of the soul—pure or corrupted—makes no difference to them." Clockwork, seemingly unaffected by the entire ordeal, spoke calmly as Danny, deeply rattled, tried to gathered himself.

Once he'd regained control of his erratic breathing, the teen gasped out a question. "But that Hound has a single…" waved a hand idly, Danny fumbled for words "…consciousness; one voice that it speaks with. How can it do that if it's made up of many different souls?" As Danny asked this he tried to look up at the Time Master, but found it too disconcerting to watch as the ghost once again rapidly de-aged from adult to child, then begin the cycle anew. The halfa sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose.

Clockwork passed a hand over his chin before answering. "Perhaps it is the voice of the original monster, the one that first began devouring souls. Or maybe it is the voice of all the souls that have melded together to form a unit. We cannot know for certain." As though realizing that Danny was having difficulty watching his constantly shifting body, Clockwork abruptly settled on the form of an old man. Danny smiled appreciatively. "What we do know is that this creature's sole purpose is to devour souls."

Fear turned Danny's insides to ice. "Tucker and Sam!"

Clockwork shook his head. "Fear not, young ghost. Legion is weakened in his state. He cannot devour the souls of the living at this time. I believe your friends, though frightened and trapped, are safe for the moment. Have you noticed that Legion seems to be confined to the museum?"

"…I… yes…" In all honesty, Danny hadn't given that much thought.

Clockwork's eyebrow rose with an expression somewhere between exasperation and amusement. "Legion is still gathering its strength. In its condition it can only devour souls separated from the human body."

"You mean ghosts." Danny's eyes widened in realization. "Is that why all the ghosts have disappeared? They fear that Legion will come after them?"

Clockwork nodded. "A ghost's greatest fear is being stripped of their obsession, their regrets—essentially their very will—without having fulfilled it. That would condemn them to an eternity trapped on earth."

Danny wondered then how exactly _he _fit into the equation. The Hound had made it clear that it desired to have Danny as some kind of tasty appetizer, but Danny was only _half_ ghost. So… what did that mean? Feeling that his head was already pretty stuffed with information, Danny decided to put off this question for a more important one.

"Why is Legion back now?" The teen asked. "And how can we stop it?"

"Legion was awakened…" Clockwork said slowly. "And the last time that happened the damage caused was monstrous." Again, the time ghost passed his sceptre over the mirror, this time creating a rust coloured stain that crawled over its smooth reflective surface. Gradually, a scene began to materialize and Danny flinched, half-expecting the horrible screams to start again.

The screaming did come, but not in the same ear-shattering way as before. Across the mirror's surface people ran in haphazard terror as they tried to escape fire that rained down from a sky the colour of blood. People fell, struck down by forces they couldn't comprehend. Tendrils of darkness slithered across the ground, gathering to a single point as they came together in a form Danny knew all too well. Riveted, he realized that this scene was much worse than the screaming from before.

Legion towered over the chaos, looking down on the terrified people with the lofty scorn of a tyrant regarding a slaughter. The demonic dog-beast, formed from writhing tentacles of black, stood at a terrific height that more than dwarfed the creature Danny had encountered in the museum. Spitting fire from its mouth, its giant paws came down in steps that crushed both buildings and people alike, tearing apart the Earth with horrific claws.

"Enough… stop… I don't want to see this." Danny recoiled, but horror glued his eyes to the bloody massacre. Clockwork, showing the young teen mercy, nodded in understanding and swept away the image. But before the picture had completely faded, Danny recognized something about the scenery, the landscape.

"That place looked familiar…" He murmured, speaking his thoughts aloud.

Clockwork gazed at Danny thoughtfully. "As well it should. That was Amity Park."

Danny's eyes shot to the other's, widening.

"Yes, that was Amity, twenty-six years ago…" Clockwork shifted into a more youthful form, that of a middle-aged man, and drifted to the side, long cape fluttering behind him. "But if you want the full details, I suggest you ask your father about it… Ask him about the 'Night of Abaddon'."

Danny's mouth was open; and it hung there for a few moments as he could think of absolutely nothing to say. He'd never heard of anything like that happening in Amity Park. Why hadn't his parents talked about it? Was it an alternate-reality type of thing—like his evil future self? His Dad _had _sucked the house into an alternate dimension before… Licking his lips, Danny dragged his jaws together.

'_Right. Okay.'_ He told himself. _'One thing at a time.'_

"Right, well, I don't need to know what's _happened; _I just wanna know how to fix it and save Sam and Tucker!" Danny spoke fervently and when Clockwork's expression told the halfa he was going to be scolded for his impatience again, he ploughed on. "No, Clockwork, don't look at me like that! I can't be patient! I know all this history and stuff is important. And I _will _listen to it. Just not right now. Right now there's no time! While we're sitting here, Sam and Tucker could be going through…" Danny paled as his mind brought up all sorts of ghastly images. "Something bad. My first priority is to save them—and take Legion down in the process, if possible. So, what I _need _to know is what are those crystals Legion wants, what is that _Jot-pa-jot_ thing and how can I find it?"

Clockwork was silent for a long moment and Danny, chest heaving after his impassioned speech, was beginning to wonder if he'd made the Time Master angry. Much to his surprise, Clockwork just let out a low chuckle.

"Well said, young half-ghost." The ghost, fingering his long staff, melted down into the form of a child and looked up at Danny with glowing red eyes half hidden by his purple hood. "Very well, I will tell you what you need to know."

Danny nodded, satisfied "Good."

"A soul, when it is separated from the body, will instinctively try to leave the Earth. However, sometimes these souls are burdened by such strong regrets that they are forced to remain here—chained to the mortal plane—until they are fulfilled. In the absence of a physical body to reside in, the soul creates a temporary, metaphysical container."

"A ghost." The teen said knowingly, easily following the explanation after having listened to one too many of his parents' ghost-related debates. "It's like the Ghost Zone, which is, basically, the metaphysical mirror image of the physical plane."

"Correct," Clockwork agreed. "Now, some ghosts, when their metaphysical body ceases to exist, will leave behind a crystal. Much like the one I gave in return for sparing your friend's lives. These crystals, when gathered together, are called _'Jyoth pe Jyoth'_… not _jot-pa-jot_ as you so passionately quoted earlier." The ghost gave a vague, fond smile at Danny's embarrassed blush.

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that." The halfa rubbed the back of his neck, looking up at Clockwork sheepishly as he apologized for his rant. "So, um…" The teen hummed, putting a fist to his lips as he pondered Clockwork's words. "All I have to do is find a ghost, put it to rest and I'll get a crystal thing?" It was _that _easy? Surely there must be some catch…

"Not just anyone can put a ghost to rest. And not just any ghost will yield a shard." Clockwork warned, making Danny groan. Shifting back into the form of an elderly man, the ghost swooped closer to the boy and placed an reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Do not be discouraged. I am sure you will find the right path in time."

"But I don't _have _time!" Danny gripped.

Clockwork just patted the younger boy's shoulder before gently turning him around. "Go now, find the ghosts—"

"But they're gone!"

Clockwork smiled kindly. "It is true, the ghosts have fled their homes; but you'll find that it's much more difficult to leave the one place that binds your spirit to Earth." The ghost's eyes glinted meaningfully down at Danny, who just cocked his head, bemused.

"Very well, it's time for you to continue your quest, young Halfling. I fear I've far exceeded my quota for meddling today." And with a low chuckle, Clockwork guided Danny to the gates of his castle.

Left alone to chew on his mentor's words, Danny renewed his flight through the Ghost Zone. Only this time, he was actually _trying _to find his enemies.

* * *

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* * *

Danny had started his search with a determined energy: zipping through the Ghost Zone like a bullet as he opened every door, overturned every rock. But as the hours dragged on, without a single fruit to his labour, Danny's flight began to lag and the cold pit of doubt began to settle in his stomach.

Technus' layer was filled with his useless gadgets and gizmos, but they were all lifeless and abandoned.

And Skulker… Danny had never been in the Ghost Zone so long without the hunter trying to make him 'prey'.

There weren't even any guards patrolling the area around Walker's prison; though he hadn't dared to go too close. The warden was still holding a grudge from the last time they'd met and Danny had a feeling Walker would sooner lob off his head than help him.

Bit by bit, Danny was feeling the hope seep out of him; and it was like his very life was bleeding out—leaving him weak and dazed. It was at this time, while he was desperately consulting his ghost zone map for un-scoured areas, when he picked up Jazz's voice on the Fenton Phone hanging from his ear.

"Yeah?" He asked, putting a hand to the triangular device in his ear as his head tilted to the side. His sister's voice came in on the other end, pelting him with rapid fire questions: where had he'd been, what he was doing, had he found a way to save Sam and Tucker and… she kept going, and going… asking more questions than Danny cared to think about.

Moving his hand to his temple and rubbing the headache developing there, Danny gave his sister a watered-down version of what Clockwork had said. Some gut intuition was cautioning him against telling Jazz everything. She'd only ask questions: analyze the situation and basically waste time pouring over stuff that wasn't important. So he told her only the immediate basics: he needed to find the missing ghosts in the Ghost Zone because they had something that Danny would trade for Tucker and Sam's freedom.

He must have been very convincing… either that or he had sounded very strained. Either way, Jazz didn't press him further. Instead, she instructed him to pack it in for the night and head home.

Danny had protested—he would have searched all night if it brought him any closer to finding Tucker and Sam—but Jazz was adamant. She told him their parents would be coming home soon, and with Sam and Tucker already missing, the last thing they needed was for their paranoid parents to start getting suspicious. She told Danny to come home, get some sleep and start early the next day. It was the weekend, Danny could take the Specter Speeder and the Fenton Finder and search much more efficiently than his haphazard, chaotic flitting about.

There was no disputing his sister's logic and Danny relented, cutting the connection and setting off toward home with a dejected sigh.

* * *

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* * *

Danny slept fitfully.

A powerless observer, Clockwork could only watch as the teen faced the unseen demons of his troubled mind.

"Strength, young Halfling." The ghost placed a hand on the boy's head, weaving thin fingers through the mop of messy, black hair, even as Danny grimaced and rolled away.

"The real trial has only just begun."

* * *

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_Danny awoke in a dark place._

_Scrambling to his feet, he threw his arms out, pushing away at the air. It was a defensive mechanism, one deeply ingrained in him after so many hours of ghost fighting._

_But there was nothing._

_Nothing in front of him, nothing behind him and nothing on the sides. Danny spun in a slow circle, sweeping his hands through the air. His eyes—useless—were blind in the endless dark, though he continued to blink owlishly at nothing, hoping, for a shred of light to appear, to guide him._

_Swiping his foot__ over the ground, Danny took a cautious step into the abyss. The utter silence pounded in on his ears from all sides. Cut off from every human sense, Danny felt the chilling claws of insanity pressing in on his mind._

_No. He couldn't. _

_Gathering__ himself together, Danny forced confidence to the forefront of his mind and strode forward. Almost immediately, his foot snagged on something and he fell with a mute yelp._

_A door handle on the ground._

_Opening it, it led to a whole new world. Vibrancy, colour and above all: sound. Danny leapt down into the pit of flames without even thinking._

_Flashes of fire. Lava. Danny landed on a ground of bubbly black rock threaded by tiny rivers of red. He looked around._

_Flames danced in the air before him, playing and crackling merrily. It was pleasant, amusing, and Danny relished the comforting warmth. Then the lava reached for him and he cried out at the searing heat on his skin. Droplets of unbearably hot fire turned into black slim that crawled over his chest toward his heart._

_Danny swept off the stuff, taking to air. He flew with all his strength, away from that flaming hell. Heat once soothing was now stifling, making sweat dampen his hair and run down his neck._

_And then he was no longer trapped by walls of fire._

_He was on an empty road, lit by hazy streetlamps. Creeping along the lane, Danny kept glancing behind himself edgily. He could feel it: the flighty paranoia of the hunted. Answering his fears, a pair of sickly yellow eyes emerged from the shadows, squinting with dark mirth. Deathly fearful of the knowledge those yellow eyes held, Danny ran: turned away from the lit street and ducked down one of the smaller alleys._

_His heart pounded in his ears, black hair flopped before his eyes and he shoved it away. In his mad flight, he had no concept of where he was running until he nearly slammed nose-first into a brick wall._

'_**Danny' **__His pursuer spoke with his name with a sibilant purr._

_Danny froze. Turning with painful slowness, his wide eyes raked the air before landing on the figure before him. The eyes were not yellow but an endless abyss of black. His twin in height and body shape, the creature before him was a twisted, corpse-like version of Danny. Flashing filed shark-teeth, the thing leered at Danny._

"_Wh—What do you want from me!" Danny pressed his back into the wall behind him as he shouted the words._

'_**Poor little Casper,'**__ the doppelganger crooned, stepping slowly, deliberately, toward Danny._

_And for all his strength and power, Danny could not move. He was a mind trapped in a body of lead, rooted to the ground. Immobile._

_The creature, wearing a half-rotten mockery of his face, cocked its head. __**'You will find out very soon. We promise.'**_

_And, very lightly, it put its hand on Danny's chest. With a palm that felt more like water and worms than flesh, it gave him a light push. And like a doll, Danny tipped over backward and fell._

_There was a splash and, to his alarm, he found himself underwater._

_He thrashed. This instinctual movement sparked the realization that he could move and he immediately began coordinating his limbs to push him upward. But no matter how hard he pushed, how much water he paddled out of the way, there was no end in sight. Blue, blue haze all around, no light, no land, no salvation._

_Eventually the need for air took him. Danny's mouth opened against his will. Water, not air, filled his lungs, shocking his body, burning his throat, his nose._

_The thrashing became wilder, tinged with erratic hysteria as more water flowed through his nostrils, slipping down the back and drowning his screams of terror. In a desperate act, he covered his mouth, pinched his nose shut._

_And then the burning began to fade, sight began to fade and sleep seemed so comforting._

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It took Danny a long while to realize he could breath.

Lying there in his bed, chest heaving up and down as though he'd just run a marathon, Danny had been frozen in place, gripped by pure, animal fear for long moments until his brain somehow bypassed all the senseless babble in his mind to inform him that _he was alive._

"… It… dream?" Danny's voice was subdued to a mere breath of air as he tried to wrap his head around the situation.

Sure enough, memories of dinner with his family and walking upstairs to his bedroom starting coming back to him. He'd spent a little time talking strategy with Jazz before sliding into under his bedcovers and tossing sleeplessly for a while.

Sitting up, Danny looked at the time. It was morning—or pretty close, anyway—and yet he felt like he'd been up all night.

A sudden though struck him and Danny tore off his salmon-coloured nightshirt and stared in dismay at himself.

The spot on his shoulder was larger. Every day it spread just a little more—not significantly, but the days were adding up. Now, instead of being a tiny bruise on his right shoulder, it had spilled over to his chest, and was crawling up past his collarbone. At this rate, it would soon be visible over the collar of his shirt.

It was creating a path to his heart. Danny knew it.

Pulling the shirt back over his head, Danny clenched at the buttons—noticed how his fingers trembled with fatigue—and lowered his head.

'_What's happening to me?'_

After, Danny resolved himself, after they rescued Sam and Tucker, he'd tell Jazz about the weird spot and they'd figure out a way to make it go away together.

After.

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_End Chapter 17_

_To Be Continued…_

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Yay! End chapter ^.^ Hope you had fun. It's not a cliff-hanger (I think XD) AND now you guys have an idea of where I'm going with this story! So, please tell me what you think!

To everyone who reviewed the last TWO chapters ('cause I didn't thank you guys in the last chapter :3): I could not have written this without your encouragement! **pearl84, Yugisrose, Nylah, sciencefreak330, If-I-Could-Write-500-Miles., SoullessAce, inukagome15, perpetuallyconfused, RenesmeeScarlet, Kirby77DP77, Werewolfsong** and **chalicity! Thank you!!**

**Adio!**


	18. Cold Morning

**Hiya!**

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! Holidays are awesome fun ^_^

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom and all related characters are the property of Butch Hartman. Er, I don't own Guess either.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

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_**Chapter 18—**__Cold Morning_

Paulina Sanchez had not become popular on her looks alone. Certainly, her slim waist, flowing dark hair and doe eyes placed her a cut above the other girls, but Paulina's careful ascension through the school's social hierarchy had been a calculated move.

She was no freakish genius like Jazz Fenton, but Paulina had her own wiles. The boys adored her in her cute volleyball uniform and clubs like the yearbook committee and student council did wonders for a person's social network.

Unfortunately, those groups required extra commitments. Which was why Paulina now found herself strolling down the street to Casper High at the ungodly hour of 6:45am.

Born to two landed immigrants from Argentina, Paulina was a first generation American and she revelled in it. She had listened to too many of her Papa's stories of the 'old country' and had no desire whatsoever to experience the impoverished life her parents had led before coming to America. Paulina was the perfect example of a young, modern girl—born and raised in a fast-paced, advancing country. But her Papa was a bull-headed traditionalist—lauding the virtues of hard-work and independence and how nothing in life came to the lazy. Often, Paulina circumvented her Papa's inflexibility by going to her Mama; but there were some days she couldn't escape dealing with her Papa.

Which was why today she found herself taking the long, twenty-minute walk to school, instead of getting a five-minute drive from her Mama.

It had something to do with 'building character' or some such idiocy. Paulina really hadn't stuck around long enough to get the whole lecture from her Papa.

However, if there was anyone who could make walking—the poor person's route—look fashionable and desirable, it was Paulina Sanchez. She used the time to break in her new heels (purchased on her kind Mama's credit card), hooked her Guess purse delicately on the crook of her elbow and chatted non-stop on her hot pink cell phone held between carefully manicured nails.

"_Hey, yeah, did you see Valerie yesterday?"_ Star was saying on the other end of the connection. "_I wonder how she sprained her arm, no one's talking."_

"And why would they?" Paulina said disinterestedly as she stepped daintily onto the curb after crossing a wide street. The edge of her skirt fluttered in the air behind her and she took a moment to admire how the material flattered her legs. "Valerie is hardly worth gossiping about. You should know that, Star." The Latino girl's voice held a tone of mild chastisement.

"_Uh… right_." Star stammered and Paulina could almost see her blond, somewhat spacey friend wracking her mind for a more 'gossip worthy' topic. Sometimes, Star was such a grub. "_Well, what about Danny?_"

"Danny Phantom?" Paulina asked, immediately perking up. Had Star heard something about her handsome Ghost boy that she'd missed?

"_Uh… no…_" Star mumbled; "_Danny Fenton_."

"Oh…" Paulina deflated, but her interest remained peaked. Danny Fenton was a loser, but he was also the current talk of the school. The news of his fight with Dash had spread to the seniors and that alone made him worthy of attention. "What about him?" Spotting the shortcut she usually took whenever she walked to school, Paulina turned down a narrow dirt path, mindful of her heels as she walked. The path led around a pretty little lake, and it would eventually deposit her right near the back entrance of the school.

"_Well, everyone's wondering exactly what's going on with him… What do you think?_"

"How would I know? I've hardly ever talked to him." Paulina said, bemused.

"_You went out with him once, though._" Star pointed out.

Paulina flushed. That was something everyone kept telling her. But for the life of her, Paulina could not remember ever going out with dorky Danny Fenton. There had been that dance once… but she'd done that to get back at his loser goth girlfriend; that was completely different. But even though she didn't remember dating him, everyone else clearly did. So Paulina couldn't rightfully deny the event without making herself look stupid.

Scowling into the phone, Paulina picked her words carefully.

"Maybe, but that was really not—"

Something large and unyielding caught on her heel and Paulina yelped, pitching forward as her foot snagged. The phone flew from her grasp, clattering against the pebbles a few feet away as she just managed to keep herself from falling to her knees and tearing her tights.

"_Paulina, what—?_" Star's confused voice came distantly from the phone. But Paulina wasn't paying any attention as she examined her now ruined heel.

"Aie! These were new!" She cried in dismay, holding one, completely detached, flashy, metallic heel in her hand.

Turning back to see what had caused this unforgiveable transgression, Paulina frowned at a lumpy piece of tattered material on the ground. The material was the ugly colour of dying moss and it led into a thatch of heavy grass and weeds. It would have blended in perfectly had it not been for the conspicuous, splotchy, grey… _thing_ sticking out of the end.

Morbid curiosity drew her closer and, as Paulina neared the lumpy mass she realized that the material was actually the sleeve of a long shirt. Her brain froze as she stared at the bloated, unsightly grey hand sticking out of the cuff. She did not comprehend as her eyes followed that arm back up to a torso, half hidden in a ditch of grass and leaves. And she still didn't understand, couldn't make sense of the horror overloading her senses—not until her wide eyes fell on a bloodless, sagging face, sightless eyes staring at nothing and gaping mouth like an open wound, stretching the face with a silent cry.

And then it seemed like Paulina could understand too much—could see every detail of the discoloured flesh and the horrid nest of thatch-like white hair, could smell the awful stench of death—she backpedalled, falling over her uneven heels with a cry. Then, as though realizing she had a voice, the cries wouldn't stop falling from her mouth, melding until they became a shrill, panicked scream that split the air.

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Early Saturday morning saw Danny slumped at the kitchen table. One elbow rested on the counter, providing support for the hand that held up his head as weary but insomnious eyes focused stubbornly on the sheaf of papers scattered before him. Among and around the papers was a small but potent gathering of his parents' best gadgets, not the least of which was the Fenton Bazooka—fully charged and almost Danny's equivalent in height—resting carefully against the table. The porridge that was supposed to be his breakfast was largely forgotten as Danny stirred the lukewarm mixture listlessly, his attention fully taken by his whirling thoughts.

Jazz had gone. Abandoning him for some school committee or the other, his sister had apologized in the same breath that she'd justified her actions. They had to 'act normal', she'd said. 'Pretend nothing was wrong.' And Sam's parents were apparently going to be at whatever high-society thing Jazz was organizing, so all the more reason for her to go.

Honestly, Danny did appreciate all the interference his sister was running: thinking through all the angles and making sure to sweep away Danny's tracks at the end of it all was what she excelled at. Nonetheless, he still found himself feeling resentful at how she'd left him completely alone to search the Ghost Zone.

At least his parents weren't home. They were out investigating the mysterious, impenetrable ghostly dome that had inexplicably snapped up around the museum yesterday. Thank God for small favours.

Danny was half-way to spooning a mouthful of tasteless mush onto his unsuspecting taste buds when the doorbell rang with a loud, ghastly screeching. Danny's head shot up from the papers and he padded over to the front door in his socks.

'_Don't be Vlad, don't be Vlad…'_ He really didn't have the energy to get into another mind numbing battle of wills with that man.

It was a pleasant surprise then, to see not Vlad but Valerie standing in his threshold, arms crossed with an amused smirk on her face.

"Hey, nice doorbell." She teased.

The corners of Danny's lips pulled upward, he couldn't help it—Valerie always had a way of making him laugh. "Yeah, I know," ducking his head, he ran a hand through his hair embarrassedly. With his eyes averted, Danny missed the softening around Valerie's eyes as she watched his sheepishness. "I'm not even sure what Dad did to it; just be glad it didn't shoot you with ecto-foam or something."

Valerie raised an eyebrow. "Ecto-foam?" She asked, feigning ignorance. She knew full well about the substance and its ghost repelling abilities, but _Danny_ didn't need to know that she knew that.

"Yeah, he tried to rig that up once." Danny said, referring to his father. "But Mom wouldn't let him. After Dad nearly vacuumed off Jazz's hair while trying to prove she was a ghost, Mom set some ground rules."

This last statement was said with such seriousness that Valerie didn't even doubt its veracity. And without a remote idea of how to address that topic, she just blinked and let it bounce off. Instead, she weighted Danny's appearance with a concerned look.

"Wow Danny, you look terrible." She said, taking in his glassy, tired eyes, slumped stance and dishevelled hair. "You must have been really sick yesterday. Are you feeling better?"

Danny opened his mouth and almost outed himself with a 'What do you mean?' before his brain caught up and he licked his lips, mentally thanking Jazz for covering for his absence at school yesterday. He had forgotten all about it. "Yeah," he said, looking down at his sweatpants and worn T-shirt. Suddenly, he was very glad that he'd at least had the foresight to change out of his salmon-coloured pyjamas. Now _that_ would've been embarrassing to show to his ex-girlfriend. "I'm feeling better. You're hardly one to talk though, are _you _feeling okay?" He asked, slanting a critical eye on her.

For her part, Valerie was a little taken aback at Danny's perceptiveness. Sure, she'd been having trouble sleeping lately, and her Father was starting to voice concern over the circles under her eyes, but weren't boys supposed to be oblivious to that kind of stuff? Then she remembered her sling and heaved a relieved sigh—Danny must have been referring to her arm, not her apparent exhaustion. "Heh, you mean this?" She gestured to her bound arm. "It's coming along. Slowly, but surely. I'll have this thing off in no time and then I'll be taking you up on that sparring match." At these last words, her green eyes lit with challenge and she congratulated herself for successfully diverting the subject.

"Hmm…" But Danny was still giving her that contemplative stare. The one that always made her feel like he knew exactly what she was thinking. Valerie stood firm though, and after a few moments he thankfully dropped the subject. "Okay," he nodded. "If you say so. Anyway, is there something you needed? What made you drop by so early?"

With a flash of remembrance, Valerie recalled why she'd come by Danny's house so early. Certainly it hadn't been to mother him. Her cheeks warming somewhat, she quickly reached into her purse and rummaged around until she found the item she was looking for.

"Here, I was passing by the museum yesterday and I saw this on the ground." She held out the PDA in her hand to Danny.

For a moment, Danny just looked at the thing with an odd, stricken look on his face and Valerie's hand dropped as she stepped closer. "Hey, what's—"

But Danny had reached out and snatched the PDA from her before she could finish her query. "The museum, you said?" He asked.

"Uh-huh," she nodded.

Danny was quiet as he fiddled with Tucker's electronic diary. Then, in a low voice he said. "I guess you saw… then…"

Valerie's eyes widened. "Oh yeah… I saw it." Her tone was meaningful enough that Danny's head snapped up as stared at her narrowly. Sensing his suspicion, she hurried to explain. "I was just passing by randomly—" She was _definitely_ not going to tell him that she had deliberately gone to the museum to investigate the validity of this so-called impenetrable shield. Danny was still blissfully ignorant of her ghost hunting side and she wanted to keep it that way. "I saw the crowd and decided to check it out. The thing covers the entire museum, it's causing quite a scene."

"Yeah, my parents went to check it out earlier." Danny agreed. "So it's true then? It really keeps out hu—uh—people?" He stuttered on the last word. Valerie wasn't sure exactly why he'd changed his word choice, but Danny looked honestly curious about the answer so she indulged him.

"Yep. It certainly does. I put my hand on the thing myself. It looks freaky," Valerie recalled the way her hand laid across the mass of glowing green swirls that moved and shifted almost lazily. It had been disconcerting to touch something that looked about as solid as floating smoke, yet felt like rock. "But it was like putting your palm on granite. Cold and hard."

Danny frowned, looking thoughtful. It was then that Valerie realized something else.

"Hey, where are Sam and Tucker? I called Tucker before coming here to see if he was home and his Dad said he was here." It was unusual to see Danny without his two wingmen—wing-girl, in Sam's case—at his shoulders. Usually they would have come rushing over by now. That was probably why Valerie felt like something was missing. It had been a while since she'd been in Danny's presence without having the dubious pleasure of exchanging glares with Sam behind his back.

"Uh… um…" Danny's eyes took on a vaguely panicky look. "They—they're here, just upstairs sleeping. Yeah, that's it, they're still sleeping 'cause they're sick."

Valerie sighed, partly in annoyance and partly in amusement. "Danny you're a horrible liar. And a terrible host. I've been here standing on your porch for—what?—five minutes now and you haven't even invited me in."

"I—I uh…" Valerie decided Danny looked cute when he was flustered, and therefore figured she'd forgive him this once.

"That's fine, don't worry about it." She said, brushing by him as she invited herself into the Fenton home. Danny's mouth was open and he stared at her, then the door, in contemplation before finally closing the door with a sigh.

"Well, come on in, then." He muttered dryly.

"Thanks," Valerie said, mimicking his tone. "So where are they? Sam and Tucker?" She gazed up at the empty staircase then moved toward the kitchen.

"Look, they aren't—don't—" Danny pleaded, followed after her. But he didn't get to finish either of his sentences when Valerie let out a yell.

"Danny! What are you doing with all of this!?" She stood in the doorway of the kitchen looking with shock and dismay at the multitude of diagrams detailing the Ghost Zone and its inhabitants that lay scattered across the spacious island table. Her eyes skimmed over the various ghost weapons and then widened considerably when they reached the bazooka.

She spun around, eyes demanding an immediate explanation from Danny.

He gaped at her, stammered something nonsensical, then let his gaze pass by her into the kitchen. Danny winced. From this point of view it looked very much like he was planning some sort of suicidal assault on the ghost world.

"Look…" He started, raising his hands placatingly. "This isn't what you think. My parents are ghost hunters, of course they—""

"Oh don't even try pulling that with me!" Valerie interrupted acerbically, rolling her eyes. "Look, your parents might be a little out there, but not even they would be planning something so obviously stupid. And this!" She snatched a paper from the pile, strode forward and waved it under Danny's nose. "This is definitely not your Mom's handwriting."

Danny looked down at the paper, noted the nearly illegible chicken scratches that made up his hasty notes, and grimaced as he remembered that Valerie had much experience reading his handwriting after the notes they'd passed during class while they'd dated. In desperation, he tried to turn the argument in another direction.

"What does it matter to you anyway!? You don't know anything about ghosts! So I'm helping out my parents with a project, so what?" He said, hoping beyond hope that Valerie's desire to keep her own double life secret from him would allow him to keep _his _double life secret from _her_.

"Danny…" Valerie's voice dropped several decibels as she backed up to the table, looking at him in quiet concern. "You wouldn't have that expression on your face if all this," she gestured at the table, "was for 'helping out you parents'. Just tell me what's going on. Please. I can help."

If it had been concern alone driving her, Danny would have continued to deny everything. However, the steely glint he saw in her eyes now was the same one he saw every time she raised her gun to his ghost form. She wasn't going to back down; and any denials from him would be matched with fierce argument, and possibly a black eye.

He heaved a sigh, backed up a few paces then sank into the couch that rested at the edge of the family room.

"Don't overreact." He said.

Valerie just stared at him.

"And don't do anything stupid."

Her stare turned into a glare and he winced in anticipation.

"Tucker and Sam are… they aren't here."

Realization was dawning in Valerie's eyes, but she wasn't completely there. She needed him to say it. "Where are they?"

Danny was already cringing, as though he could already hear her yelling in his ears. "They were kidnapped."

"KIDNAPPED?!"

"—by ghosts." He finished.

"GHOSTS!?" Her voice reached an ear-piercingl pitch and Danny dropped his head into his hands, looking like he was already regretting telling her about this.

Then Valerie's eyes lit up and she stared down at the raven-haired teen. "And you were just going to jump into the Ghost Zone after them? Are you mad?!"

"Oh I'm something, alright…" Danny grumbled peevishly, but his voice was too low for Valerie to hear so he escaped a scathing retort.

"You can't just run off after them! If they've been kidnapped by ghosts then you need to go to a professional! Find the Red Hunter, or your parents; heck the _Ghost boy_ would've been a better idea then this half-cocked, disaster-in-waiting plan you're making up!"

Danny just held his head, waiting for her triad to be over. But Valerie was nowhere near done.

"You have absolutely no experience with this! Honestly, I've never seen you in the same room as a ghost. You're always running away; what on Earth made you think you can handle this on your own! Danny, this is by far the most idiotic, stupidest thing I've ever—"

"That's **enough!**" The sheer force behind Danny's words was enough to make Valerie clamp down on her words.

"Just where the _hell_ do you get off: telling me what I _can _and _cannot _do? Huh? What do _you _know about me? I have two ghost hunters as parents! I've been exposed to ghost fighting all my freaking life!" Danny's electric blue eyes were frightening in their rage. He rose from the couch and advanced on Valerie with the eerie glide of a wraith. She backed up, speechless. Unease rose in her chest as, for the first time, Valerie found herself afraid of shy, clumsy Danny Fenton.

Danny snarled, face contorting into something that didn't resemble him at all. He swept his hand out, clenching it into a tight fist that Valerie eyed warily. "You have_ no right—none!—_to call me a coward. Do you hear me?! Now _get out of my house_."

"Danny…" Valerie breathed, too shocked to put any strength behind the word.

"GET OUT!"

His enraged scream had her hastening toward the door. She couldn't leave fast enough.

And then, as Danny stood alone in the middle of the hallway, staring at the closed door, his chest heaving with effort, the rage slowly bled out of his eyes. His face slackened from its cruel snarl and a gasp was drawn in between closed teeth. His hand hit his right shoulder, clutching at the pain that seemed to spike from the area and he staggered. His side hit the wall and he slid downward as his legs just wouldn't hold his weight.

For a long time Danny did nothing but sit there, trembling, head bowed as his hand dug into his shoulder.

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_End Chapter 18_

_To Be Continued…_

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Good news! I have the next chapter written! Yup! (nods) And it's gonna be a fun one. (grins) Stay tuned!

Okay, so I've decided to use the 'reply' system to respond to reviews. However, to anonymous reviewers, I'll still respond to your reviews here. That way I get to reply to everyone :3

**perpetuallyconfused: **Hey! I'm glad you liked the last chapter! I hope you enjoyed this one too! Wow, you took a class in Sanskrit? That's pretty awesome; at my university they only offer Latin. I considered taking it, but every time I look at Latin I get flashbacks of biology and medical terms XDD Anyway, I'm really sorry this update took so long to get out (sheepish grin) but the next one will be up _much _faster, promise!

Thanks to **Kirby77DP77, Nylah, BluFox15, If-I-Could-Write-500-Miles, love-toushi, JapaneseAnimeFreak16, Dontestacowman, perpetuallyconfused, xolovebirdox, sciencefreak330, Buttercat, Baka'sAngel, Anemone Axelrod **and **dragondancer123!** Your reviews FEED me! XD

**Adio!**


	19. Meating of the Minds

**Hiya!**

Hehe, a few days ago I was in the car and we passed this store called 'Tucker Electronics'. Coincidence? Or was it...? XD

**Disclaimer:** Danny Phantom and all related characters are the property of Butch Hartman.

Enjoy!

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I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

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_**Chapter 19 — **__Meating of the Minds_

Flying always had a cathartic effect on Danny.

Even now, as he flew determinedly toward what was almost certainly one of the most half-cocked, stupidest plans he'd ever come up with, the rush of air and weightlessness seemed to lift his spirits as high as they lifted his body.

After the smouldering train-wreak that had been his conversation with Valerie, Danny had somehow managed to regroup and shove all that messy confusion aside. A flash of blue light turned him into his ghost form, then he'd swept out of FentonWorks and flown to Vlad's mansion in record time. Now familiar with the elder halfa's underground lab, Danny hadn't even hesitated before sinking through the floor and arcing over to the man's Ghost Portal, inputting the password while trying his best to ignore the hologram of his mother that was offering to cook him butterscotch caramel apple-doodles.

It was the third time Danny had managed to pass through Vlad's house with the elder none the wiser. But the teen hadn't even paused to consider that rather peculiar coincidence. Nor had he even taken enough time to grab any of the weapons he'd so carefully laid out on his parent's table. Without even a Fenton Thermos on his person, Danny was now soaring through the swirling green miasma of the Ghost Zone in an attempt to track down one of his innumerable enemies.

And yet, none of these thoughts were foremost in Danny's mind.

Instead, he was still mulling over his argument with Valerie.

He had no idea what had made him loose control with her: one minute he'd been perfectly happy letting Valerie rant out her disappointment and anger, the next he was tearing her head off like a rabid hyena.

He hadn't even mustered that much anger when he'd faced Dan.

Danny shuddered, trying not to dwell _that_ particular thought.

For a moment, he'd truly _hated_ Valerie. Despised. Abhorred… A feeling so dark he couldn't even name it had possessed him. And for what? Because she'd called him a coward? Because she, in her ignorance, had done the equivalent of calling him incompetent?

'_**She deserved what she got for insulting your pride.'**_

Danny shook off the weird thought. No, that was wrong. Getting that angry over a few words was senseless, nasty behaviour. Now, if Valerie had been attacking say, Jazz or Sam, _then_ Danny would probably have had reason to get angry. But Valerie had not meant for her words to wound. She'd been trying to prove a point, speaking out of concern for him. Her disbelief and frustration with him had twisted her words into phrases she did not truly mean.

'_**Anger loosens the tongue. Excusing one's words to the heat of passion is a convenient lie created to sooth the weak-minded.'**_

Well, in all fairness, he really _had_ run from every ghost fight he'd ever been present for in his human form. Sure, he returned once he'd turned ghost, but no one _else_ knew that. They probably all thought he was some sort of weakling or chicken.

This thought, a frequent one for Danny, didn't usually bother him. Meekness and anonymity were his most useful weapons against the striking similarities between his human and ghost halves. But today it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

'_People see me, Danny Fenton, as some sort of wimp… A loser.' _The teen's gloved hands clenched into fists; he really disliked that word.

Fortunately, Danny was coming upon his destination, so he banished his uncomfortable musings to the back of his mind.

Walker's prison loomed ahead as bleak and ominous as always. Danny floated closer, hands held cautiously before him, fully expecting baring alarms and half a dozen prison guards to bear down on him any second. When nothing but silence filled his ears, the halfa frowned. Puffing out a breath of air, he swooped upward, determinedly rising above the walls of thick grey concrete and spirals of electrical wire until he could survey the entire compound from a bird's eye view.

The watchtowers were lit but devoid of guards. Searchlights shone foreboding panels of yellow light into the surrounding area but were immobile. At the end of his patience and almost eager to incite a response, _any _response—even a violent one—Danny allowed himself to drift directly into the path of a searchlight. The thing blinded him and he had to shield his eyes against the intense glow, but though he hung there for a good half minute, no alarms rang out from the prison. No guards came to arrest him.

Yesterday, the teen had avoided searching the prison, knowing that even if he had found Walker, the jailor would have been no more willing to help the halfa than Danny would have been willing to put his own neck on the chopping block and hand Walker an axe. But now, after having found even Frostbite's frozen city abandoned, Danny found himself too desperate to care. He would _not _allow Sam and Tucker to remain another day in Legion's hands. Clockwork's words had been a reassurance; but who knew how long Legion would remain benign?

Danny moved closer to the prison, near enough to peer into the barren courtyard.

'_The place looks dead.'_ Not even in his own mind could Danny muster any humour at his half-hearted pun.

'_Legion is so threatening that even __**Walker**__'s abandoned his post.'_ That was a disconcerting thought.

Unwilling to admit that he'd come all this way for nothing, Danny dropped downward, entering the prison's courtyard. If he came across any trouble he could always just turn human and phase through the floors, he reminded himself. Humans were as much ghosts in the Ghost Zone as ghosts were in the human world. And he was pretty sure Walker hadn't found a way to counter that particular advantage of his yet. Emboldened, the snowy-haired teen floated over to a towering wall and phased through a set of double doors set in the concrete.

From the long line of barred cells that lined both sides of the narrow hall, Danny knew he'd found the prisoner's block. Pressing his lips together and furrowing his eyebrows, his more human nature took over as he dropped to the ground and began to walk the corridors.

After what felt like an age of meandering, Danny began to truly appreciate how ridiculously huge Walker's prison was. The sheer number of iron-barred prison rooms was staggering. It was a honeycomb of halls and passages all filled with cell after cell after cell, every one of them empty of inhabitants.

'_Does Walker intend to imprison the entire Ghost Zone here?'_ He wondered as he gazed into the dark depths of what must have been the hundredth cell he'd seen. Each room was about the size of a broom cupboard, maybe a few feet wider. The floor was made from dusty, naked concrete, as were the walls. Furnishing the area was a flat, sheetless military bed, all coloured the same depressing shade of grey as everything else.

Looking away from the dingy room, Danny continued down the corridor, eventually arriving at set of stairs roughly hewn into the walls. Climbing to the top, he was met with another floor of countless turns and pathways leading to innumerable cells. The narrow walls and low ceiling were beginning to have a claustrophobic effect on the halfa, who squared his shoulders and stared around himself nervously.

Quite suddenly, as he turned into a darker hallway of barred doors, Danny gasped loudly. With a chilled shudder, he saw blue smoke curling from his mouth. He'd never been so happy to see his ghost sense in his life.

'_It's nice to know what I'm up against.' _He thought, grimly remembering how his sense had failed against the Hound.

Hurrying forward, Danny's sensitive ears picked up a quiet sobbing and he headed toward the sound. Turning another bend, he arrived at a single cell tucked away in a lightless corner. The crying was loudest here and seeming to be coming from inside the barred quarters.

With an idle flourish of his wrist, a ball of green energy formed over his raised palm. Warily, Danny put his free hand on the rusty metal door and was surprised when it swung open without resistance under his fingertips. Old, disused hinges screeched noisily and the teen winced at the sound

"Hello?" He called uncertainly, poking his head into the shadowy cell. "Is someone there?"

He received no answer save a breathless hiccough as whoever-it-was tried to stifle their cries.

"Look…" Danny licked his lips, trying to find the best words to use. "I'm not gonna fight you." Well this was mostly true. He didn't want to fight; but he clearly remembered Clockwork's words: _'Put a ghost to rest', _the elder ghost had said. What exactly did that mean? Would the ghost fight it? Danny didn't know.

"Please," He beseeched. "I just need your help."

Stepping fully into the cell, Danny brought his ghostly lantern with him and let it bathe the room in an eerie green glow. The wavering light fell on a lone dilapidated bed and he stopped, eyes widening as he spotted a trembling figure seated there.

Though the figure's back was to him, its faint glow betrayed it to be a ghost. A large back heaved with suppressed sobs and Danny drew in a breath as he recognized the ghost's dress and profile.

"…Lunch Lady?" He said awkwardly. Having never referred to her except in third person to his friends, it felt very odd to call the ghost 'The Lunch Lady' now. But, not knowing what else to call the woman, he had little choice.

The ample-sized, round-faced ghost raised her head out of her hands and stared at Danny with such a broken look that he staggered backward. Rivulets of tears ran down her green tinged cheeks and Danny stared at her pained eyes with trepidation, realizing, perhaps for the first time, that he'd never seen a ghost cry before.

"H-hi…" Danny hated seeing anyone sad, and his subconscious instinct to sooth rose up before he could insert logic into the situation. "Hey… uhm… Are you all right? Why are you still here; why didn't you run away like all the other ghosts?"

The Lunch Lady sent Danny an unfathomable look, her dark green eyes staring right through him. Then she turned her head forward, letting out a small, mirthless laugh.

"The others have sought refuge in the Deep. I cannot go. I cannot…" Danny was about to ask her why she couldn't go when her eyes came up once more to look at him. "Little ghost child, why are you still here? Do you not fear the Demon?"

Danny didn't respond right away and a beat of silence passed between them.

"Oh! Goodness! What _am_ I doing?" With an inexplicable twist of personality, the Lunch Lady heaved herself to her feet, fixed her hairnet and apron before turning to Danny. The halfa blinked, seeing not a trace of the woman's former anguish in her now gleaming eyes.

"Deary me," The ghost said jovially. "Would you like a cookie?" And from thin air she conjured up a plate of lumpy chocolate chip cookies.

Very slowly, and still trying to make sense of what had just happened, Danny shook his head.

Immediately, the Lunch Lady's eyes flamed, changing in an instant from a friendly green to the colour of wet blood.

"THEN FACE YOUR DOOM!"

The halfa had to duck as the plate of cookies came spinning at his head. Even still, the sharp edge sheared off a tuft of white hair before lodging into the brick wall with a loud crack.

"Hey, I know they say good cookies are to die for," Straightening, Danny gaped at the platter, which was still ringing from its impact with the wall. "But this is a bit extreme, isn't it?"

Then the Lunch Lady came flying at him and Danny dropped all idle banter to focus on the battle.

It was almost pathetically easy. With only a few well-placed shots and a little scuffling, the Lunch Lady went flying out of the cell and across the hallway. She hit the wall hard enough to make a portion of it crumble then collapsed to the ground in a heap. Dust and shards of concrete settled around her downed form.

Danny found himself actually squelching feelings of pity as he landed next to her and knelt down.

"Hey, listen, I really don't want to fight you." He said softly as he offered her a hand to get up. "Just…tell me why you're here. All the ghosts, they're running because they're scared of Legion, right? Then why are you still here? Why haven't you gone?"

The woman lay limply against the ground, ignoring Danny's hand as she blinked her now clear green eyes.

"I cannot…" She mumbled.

"Tell me why." Danny insisted.

Finally, the ghost seemed to actually understand the meaning of his words and, perhaps sensing the sincerity in them, looked up at the teen in shock.

Danny just smiled, offered her again his hand. This time, she hesitantly pulled up a hand and grasped his, allowing the teen to pull her into a sitting position against the wall.

"I had a daughter once…" She began suddenly, before stopping, looking unsure of whether to continue.

"Yeah? Tell me. How old was she?" Danny encouraged, plopping down next to her. The whole situation was a little surreal for him, but he decided to just go with it and not think too much.

"I had a daughter. She was… She was just about your age." And when the Lunch Lady's eyes snapped up to his he found he couldn't look away.

A bright flash of white filled his vision.

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_I had a daughter. She was just fourteen. Just starting high school, she was so worried, so scared she wouldn't fit in…_

Danny gazed around himself. He was standing in a void of white light. The Lunch Lady's voice was disembodied, and seemed to echo in his mind more so than his ears.

Then, out of the light, vague outlines began to form and Danny focused on them, squinting his eyes.

The first was that of a young teenaged girl. Her long dirty blond hair was swept up into a neat French braid and she smiled merrily at something next to her. Her outfit was a non-descript uniform, yet Danny somehow knew the date was somewhere in the 1950s. Then, around the girl, Danny started to recognize the familiar surroundings of the Casper High cafeteria materializing. As he kept watching, more kids appeared around him, but his eyes remained glued to the little girl with the braid. She looked very young—almost frail. If Danny hadn't known without doubt that he was standing in his high school cafeteria, he would have thought she belonged a few years under him.

_She was a good girl, my Abigail. Always kind, always willing to help others, she had a big heart._

The emotion Danny felt swelling in his heart could only have been described as a parent's pride. But, while he normally should have associated the feeling with paternity, there was something distinctly maternal about the way he was seeing the little girl, Abigail.

_But she was a sickly child._

And the vision before Danny's eyes altered suddenly. Before him, he could see now the white washed walls of a hospital. There was a bed, and around it the curtains were drawn tightly. The stiff plastic material could not keep out the sounds of wretched coughing, however; and he felt his heart tighten with pain. Helplessness.

_God granted us the fruits of our prayers only half-heartedly, for we'd been given a beautiful baby girl, but she was prone to illness. And she had many sever allergies._

The knowledge came to Danny slowly, like water being drawn up into a sponge. The scene before him shifted back to the high school cafeteria and he saw how the Lunch Lady would carefully portion her daughter's food. Wheat and fruits were kept away—Abigail had a deadly allergy to strawberries, most nuts and kiwis—milk and dairy products were not allowed to touch her daughter's tray. An assortment of pills was present with almost every meal. Some of the only foods Abigail was allowed to have were meat and a very specific type of cookie that the Lunch Lady would personally bake.

_She was a good child, but very curious. She wondered why she couldn't eat like the other children. I told her the food would make her very sick. But I never told her how bad it could be…_

Danny could see the girl sitting with her friends, laughing and talking like a normal teen.

_I wanted to spare her the fear. Why put such strain on here when I could take care of everything for her? _

_Then, one day, I sick with the flu. Lunch ladies are not allowed to serve food to children if they're sick. I had to stay home._

Danny could feel the cold dread rising within him. He knew what was going to happen, could feel it. The school board had changed the menu, introduced more healthy alternatives instead of the regular choices. Abigail walked up to the counter and seemed to look around in confusion, recognizing none of her regular choices. On the urging of her friends' though, she just took what was given to her and made her way back to the lunch table.

"No!" Danny cried, but it was useless.

The effect was almost instantaneous. One moment Abigail was fine and chatting with her friends and the next she was clutching at her throat, trying desperately to draw breath. She collapsed to the ground, fright and pain completely erasing the cheerfulness of just a few second ago. People crowded closer, screamed, one person yelled to call an ambulance.

_They couldn't save her. I heard about the incident from the school principal but when I got to the hospital I was too late. My daughter was dead._

Danny felt the agonizing pain of loss wash over him so strongly that he nearly cried out. There was anguish there, pain, helplessness…. And anger… Hate…

And he knew in that moment that the Lunch Lady had killed herself.

"I vowed that I would never let anyone else suffer the same fate as my daughter." The Lunch Lady appeared before Danny, looking down at him with angry determination in her face. "No one ever got hurt by my menu and it WILL STAY THAT WAY!"

Shocked by the sudden outburst, Danny jumped back and crouched into a defensive position. Though he was saddened by the Lunch Lady's tale, there was still something sitting uneasily within him. If she was truly trying to protect the children then… Danny wasn't sure, but didn't spending all eternity trying to prevent her daughter's fate from happening again equate to compassion—selflessness even—since it basically meant giving up eternity with her daughter's spirit in the afterworld? But the Lunch Lady didn't seem selfless. Instead, Danny sensed overwhelming rage and fear, even…

'_That's it!'_

"That's a lie!" He shouted, and the Lunch Lady immediately turned furious red eyes on the ghost boy. "You're not haunting the school to help save kids. You're doing it because you're afraid!"

"What?!" The woman cried, enraged as she advanced on the teen, hands held up threateningly.

Danny, refusing to be cowed, closed his eyes and took a breath. As he did, he put himself in the Lunch Lady's shoes, trying to fully comprehend her emotions. "You're afraid that your daughter will blame you. You feel guilty that you weren't there to protect her, that you couldn't save her." His eyes opened and he saw that the ghost before him had stilled in shock. Motivated, he ploughed on. "But it wasn't your fault! She died because of an accident, because…. She wasn't careful enough and that mistake had some horrible consequences." Danny grimaced as he said the last part, realizing too late that he probably shouldn't be blaming the dead daughter in front of her mother.

Indeed, the Lunch Lady's expression tightened and she opened her mouth—probably to tell Danny off.

"_He's right, Ma."_

Both Danny and the Lunch Lady turned at the new voice. But while he just stared wide-eyed at the young girl before them, the latter let out a cry of shock and pain.

"Abigail!"

"_Yes, Ma, I'm really here." _The girl was semi-transparent as she floated a few inches of the ground and was unlike any ghost Danny had ever seen. For one, she looked exactly the same as a human, save the floating and significant lack of tangibility. Second, she seemed much too benign.

"_But I can't stay for long."_ Abigail said, smiling kindly at her mother.

"How is this possible?" The Lunch Lady said.

"_He has an amazing power, Ma."_ Abigail said, nodding in Danny direction. He merely raised an eyebrow, wondering what she meant. But before he could voice any questions, the girl continued speaking. _"I will be able to talk to you while we are in the in-between, but it won't last long."_ Then she grew solemn. _"He's right, Ma. You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened to me."_

"But… it was my fault." The Lunch Lady was gasping with the effort to keep from sobbing but Danny watched in fascination as her skin seemed to loose its green hue, gaining the ruddy hue of health.

"_No, it wasn't. Please, Ma, you have to stop blaming yourself. Dad and I are waiting for you." _Abigail begged.

The Lunch Lady gasped. "You… and your father?" And before his eyes the ghost began looking less and less like a monster and more like a grieving mother. She was round, overweight, but her face lost any malignancy it had held and the threatening aura that accompanied all ghosts seemed to seep out of her.

"_Please, come home, Ma."_ Abigail held out her hand.

The Lunch Lady, now a somewhat handsome woman in her late thirties, stared at the hand as though her daughter were offering her all the treasure in the world. Danny just continued watching, utterly bemused. Then, to his surprise, the Lunch Lady turned her head and looked straight at him.

"You have given me a priceless gift." She said softly. "I don't know how to thank you, dear."

Danny bowed his head, blushing embarrassedly as he put a hand to the back of his neck. "D-don't say that. All I did was fight you. I dunno how all this happened." He gestured vaguely at the white world surrounding them.

The Lunch Lady and her daughter stared at him in amazement.

"You act humble even though your deeds have saved me and reunited me with my daughter." The Lunch Lady looked fondly at Abigail, who grinned hugely, then turned her gaze back to Danny. "I think I know what I will give you."

And then the Lunch Lady reached out and grasped her daughter's hand. A bright light surrounded them and Danny had to shield his eyes.

"Wait!" He called and the Lunch Lady gazed back at him, forest green eyes twinkling—a complete opposite of how they'd looked not a few moments ago. The question he'd been about to ask froze in his mouth and changed as he stared into those eyes. "Why…why'd your eyes change colour?"

"A ghost's eyes turn red when they are consumed by rage and obsession." The ghost's gaze turned back to her daughter as they were slowly enveloped by the light and lifted into the air. "My daughter's presence banishes the madness. I feel... peaceful." These last words were spoken with reverent awe.

Then the light took over Danny's vision and he felt himself being pulled back—back into the real world.

Then his eyes widened in realization. "Wait!" he called out. "What's your name?"

His only response was a soft laugh as a few last words floated back to him.

"Take good care of my heart. I leave everything in your hands."

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Danny came back to himself with the feeling of a thousand bricks falling on his body. His legs immediately gave out from underneath him and he collapsed ungracefully onto the hard grey floor of Walker's prison in a heap.

His vision swam and he felt so inexplicably tired that, when he blinked, his eyelids refused to reopen.

The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was a shimmer of colour and his hand closed around something hard. As a thick haze fell over his mind, Danny wondered vaguely why he always seemed to be ending up unconscious these days. And the then he could wonder no more as the darkness claimed him.

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Miles away in a completely different dimension, the door to Vlad's mansion slammed open as Valerie Gray, decked out in full battle gear, strode into the entrance hall, her anger radiating off her in waves.

"**Masters!**" She yelled to the air. "Show yourself!" Raising her right arm, an ectogun rose from the back of her hand and she fired a bright red beam at one of the many green and gold ornaments decorating the room, destroying it with a loud explosion. "Or am I gonna have to tear this place apart and find you?!"

Barely six feet before here, the air shimmered as Vlad Masters, fully human, materialized from nothing. A cool smirk adorned his features as he loosely folded his arms behind the back of his fitted Italian suit.

Valerie's hand had wavered at the man's casual demonstration of power—his casual demonstration of his _inhumanity_. But she quickly recovered, steeling herself and levelling the glowing barrel of her gun with Vlad's eyes.

"Now, I think you and me are overdue for a little chat, _Mr. Mayor_."

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_End Chapter 19_

_To Be Continued…_

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Heya! Hope you had fun. I've been waiting to get to this part of the story (*grin*), I hope I managed to do it justice.

To all my reviewers, thanks as always for your awesomeness! **Nylah, dragondancer123, Kirby77DP77, Thunderstorm101, pearl84, TitanQueen13, love-toushi, Airamana's Shadow, Princess of Rose, Skating Queen, sciencefreak330, bbbb8484, BrokenBloodDrops **and** PhatomMous1115!**

**Adio!**


	20. Masters' Bind

**Hiya!**

Yes, another inexcusably long wait… 2010 has not been a good year for writing … But anyway! I won't take up story space with overlong explanations; we all have moments when life breaks done our door for a forced intervention, don't we? ^.^'

So! Wow… chapter 20! To celebrate, let's start it off with a lame chess pun, shall we?

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny Phantom, a fact for which Danny is probably eternally grateful X3

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 20 — **__Masters' Bind_

'_Just shoot him!'_

Valerie stood in the grand foyer of Vlad Masters' mansion, trying to boost herself up and make herself feel bigger even as the large empty space pushed in around her. Her ecto-gun was level with the head of the man whose face had been haunting her for the past month.

Vlad Masters

Vlad _Plasmius_.

Her benefactor and friend… who also happened to be an evil, psychotic ghost.

'_Shoot him!'_

'_I can't!'_ She yelled back in her head. _'What about Sam and Tucker? Danny said a ghost—'_

'_This guy is pure evil. Fat chance of getting anything out of him that's not a blatant lie. Just shoot him and then you can hunt down Phantom and beat some answers out of him.'_

'_Phantom is too unpredictable. I can never find him when I want to…'_

Valerie simply couldn't bring herself to shoot. Masters, with his silvering hair, long face and fancy custom made suit looked much too alive… too human.

'_You saw him appear out of nothing!'_

Trick of the light?

'_He turned into a blue, vampire-fanged ghost!'_

"Problems, Miss Gray? You seem a little confused." Vlad's smug voice, coupled with the sneer twisting his thin lips set Valerie's teeth on edge. And still, she didn't fire. Her trigger hand began to tremble and she had to bring up her bad arm to steady the barrel of the gun.

"What is this? No threats, no outrageous demands? I thought you came to talk, Miss Gray, so where is your tongue? ...Oh of course," Vlad effused a short, closed-mouthed chuckle. "You thought you would simply barge in here, threaten me with _my own weapons_, and—what? Catch me unaware? My, my, I _am _disappointed. I didn't expect such lack of foresight, from you especially, dear girl." The man raised a condescending eyebrow and Valerie jerked with realization.

"How did you know—?" She began, but Vlad waved her question away.

"—That you had seen me transform?" He finished with an airy gesture. "Is it so hard to believe? I am the man who supplied you with a small fortune in ghost hunting and espionage gear out of the pure _generosity_ of my heart. Did you really think I wouldn't show equal, if not exceeding, attention to my own house?"

"You saw me on tape." Valerie realized.

Vlad put his hands together in a mocking applause, "Very good! Excellent skills of deduction." He jeered.

Through the red visor of her battle suit, Valerie stared at Vlad. The hooded look he was giving her, and his eerily calm stance, made the hair rise on the back of her neck. How could she have never noticed how evil he looked? "What are you?" She breathed.

The man's mouth stretched in a toothy grin. "Now, now, I can't give you _all _the answers, can I, Valerie?"

She barely registered his use of her given name, the significance of that drop in formality passing right over her head.

"You're Masters, but you're also that evil Wisconsin ghost!" She accused.

In spite of the fact that Vlad had already all but told her he was a ghost, Valerie was still inexplicably expecting him to deny it, or at least tell her she was insane. A man _and _a ghost? What madness was that? But Vlad did not deny, did not even attempt to refute the statement.

With a flourish, Vlad swept an arm out—quick enough that Valerie jolted up the drooping tip of tip her gun—and tilted his head in a mocking bow. "Vlad Plasmius, at your service. Though I had thought you would have approached me long before now. It has been more than a month. What took you so long to confront me, girl? Surely you weren't scared?" That insufferable smirk was back.

Valerie flushed. "Me? Ha, you wish!" She spat. "For your information, I've been busy! The world doesn't revolve around you, you know." Her mind was whirling. She knew for sure now. Sure, she had seen the transformation, but to actually _hear_ him admit it…

God, she had not expected him to admit it.

Vlad looked vaguely dubious; almost as though he were ready to dispute her and argue that the world did, in fact, revolve around him. But, instead, he clasped his hands behind his back and turned his head away. His eyes focused on a gold-framed painting on a nearby wall. It was a six-foot tall monster depicting a man, likely one of Vlad's ancestors, atop a rearing warhorse. "You aren't one to scare easily," Vlad reflected, "that, at least, is true. It is also precisely the reason I chose you for my little project in the very beginning." His eyes came back to her, their cold intensity piercing her even through her visor. He stepped forward, began a slow stride around her.

Valerie scowled as she had to adjust her aim and turn with the man. Why wasn't she shooting already? What was she waiting for?

Once Vlad had completed a half circle he stopped, standing in such a way that he was between Valerie and the entrance door.

If Vlad thought a little move like that was going to intimidate _her_—Amity Park's best ghost hunter—then he was sorely mistaken.

"But your work for the past month has been less than exemplary. What is your excuse for this? You were busy? Yes, perhaps that sprained arm causes you some discomfort; but I believe the answer is a little closer to _home_. Family troubles, maybe?" These words, uttered in Vlad's soft baritone, made Valerie go rigid.

"Ah yes," Vlad drawled, "your father: such a conscientious man, very protective. I heard that he, out of concern for your rather unorthodox extra curricular activities, tried to find a doctor to surgically remove the ghost hunting suit that seems to have become one with your very constitution."

Valerie was quiet, but her silence spoke for itself.

"He failed, of course. And somehow you managed to convince him to let you keep hunting. That, or you've become better at sneaking around him. Congratulations. But speaking of your ghost hunting suit…" Vlad closed some of the space between them. Completely disregarding Valerie's warning cry and her raised gun, he peered at her suit with obvious interest. "A remarkable specimen. It comes and goes at will, no? Supplied by a ghost… Technus, no doubt. Hightened senses, increased stamina and metabolism…"

Vlad murmured some more words to himself, but all Valerie was able to pick up on was the word "nanobots".

She had no idea what the unstable man was babbling about, but she'd had enough of it.

"I didn't come here to be your test subject!" She barked, backing up a few paces and raising her gun with renewed vigour. "I don't know what you are and I don't care. All I know is that right now you and Phantom are the only ghosts in all of Amity Park. And, since I can't find Phantom, you're the one I'm going to get information out of, whether you like it or not!" She punctuated her point by revving up her weapon, which began glowing an ominous red.

"Oh?" Far from being intimidated, Vlad actually looked bored as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Valerie, you could never hope to defeat me; your threats are as flimsy as your hold on that gun. Why don't you use that fantastic ghost tracker on your suit and bring your questions to _Danny Phantom_." Here, the man bared his teeth in a very strange looking grin. "You two get along so famously after all."

"He and I aren't exactly on speaking terms." She bit out.

Vlad looked amused.

"_Enough!"_ Valerie burst out. "Enough of your stupid word games. This is not why I came here! I don't know why you first gave me ghost weapons. I don't know how you can wear the face of a human and I don't even want to know what's going on between you and Phantom. But you _will _tell me where Sam and Tucker are!" Her ecto-gun fired with a loud discharge. The shot was true and it vaporized the face of Vlad's ancestor—carving a hole in the same painting Vlad had been examining moments before.

"You will tell me," Valerie hissed, "or I swear this next shot will go through _your_ head."

At some point during her speech, Vlad's eyes had narrowed and he was now regarding her with an odd expression. He didn't even seem to notice the smoking crater in his wall.

"Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley?" he clarified. "Daniel Fenton's friends?"

There was something in the way that he said Danny's name that had Valerie frowning. "You know Danny?" She asked, digressing without even realizing it.

Vlad's expression turned crafty. He smiled. "Maddie… and Jack Fenton are old friends of mine. I am like a father to Daniel." The smile morphed into a feral grin.

Valerie bit back the urge to tell Vlad to stay away from her ex-boyfriend. Informing Masters of the relationship between her and Danny would only put her friend in greater danger. She didn't quite manage to stop her next comment though. "You can't possibly know him that well if you don't know that he hates being called Daniel."

"Oh… I am well aware." Again, he flashed that strange grin, but it quickly vanished as he levelled a serious look on Valerie. "Samantha and Tucker have been kidnapped, you say?"

"Yes!" Valerie snapped, irritated that it was _Vlad _and not her who had brought the conversation back to its point. "And I know it's you ghosts' fault. Yours and Phantom's. And you're probably the reason Danny's been acting weird too."

"Hmm. Fascinating." Vlad rested one hand under his nose, thoughtfully. He turned away from Valerie.

"Hey! Don't you ignore me, ghost!" Valerie cried out, peeved. "I want some answers!" Almost unconsciously, her hoverboard came into existence under her feet and she sped around to face Vlad straight on. "Where are Sam and Tucker?"

In an effort to show that she was being serious, Valerie fired off a shot in the man's direction. She aimed it to just singe the shoulder of his expensive suit, but was taken aback when a glowing pink shield materialized out of nothing in front of Vlad. Her shot exploded harmlessly on contact, and Vlad waved a hand idly, dismissing the shield.

Vlad sighed—_sighed_—in her face. "Valerie, you have been useful but your constant belligerence is beginning to edge on my nerves." He slipped one spidery hand into his jacket pocket.

"What are you—" Without warning, a sharp jolt of electricity shot through her body. Valerie screamed, dropping the gun in her hand and clawing at the suit which seemed to be electrocuting her from within. The hoverboard disappeared from under her feet. Her legs didn't even try to hold up her body, folding like jelly and causing her to land painfully on her sprained arm.

In a second it was all over, Valerie knew no more as she passed into unconsciousness. Her suit disappeared with her consciousness, folding in on itself and dissipating right into her skin.

Vlad's thumb released the button on the minute remote in his hand. He spared the girl on the ground the barest glance of disdain.

"Who did you think provided Technus with the technology to create your suit? Impetuous child. You're lucky I still have use for you." He said lowly.

Just then, a blinking light caught Vlad's attention. A small red bulb was flashing enthusiastically on the security panel set up near the entrance. The LED was next to a label that read 'Secret Underground Lab' in a flawless copperplate hand.

Vlad visibly lit up at this. A grin of delight, very unlike the mocking sneers he'd favoured on Valerie just moments ago, grew across his face.

"Not a moment too soon! Come Maddie," He beckoned the fat cat who had been lounging on a nearby couch. The animal gladly leapt into the man's arms. "Let's go welcome young Daniel."

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As Danny came back to his senses, he realized two things. One, the fingers of his right hand were curled around something smooth and hard. And two, he was floating and the sky was _green_.

"Whoa!" Instinctually reaching down to push himself to his feet, Danny yelped when his hands met nothing but air and he tilted on an axis, tumbling forward in a slow summersault.

He came out of the roll pale-faced and clutching at his stomach. "Urgh…" Cringing, Danny waited for the nausea to pass before fully opening bright blue eyes and looking around.

'_Huh? Wha—'m floating? Green? Ghost Zone?'_ The teen sorted through his scattered thoughts as he tried to remember the last thing that had happened to him. He remembered being in Walker's prison, finding the Lunch Lady and then…

'_Oh… that's right. The white light.'_ Without even thinking about it, Danny pulled up his legs and effectively crossed his legs in mid-air. He floated stagnantly.

Putting a hand over his mouth, Danny squinted his eyes and thought. _'I dunno where that light came from, but the Lunch Lady and her daughter… They disappeared…'_ It was more than simply 'disappeared', though. The manner in which the two ghosts had departed had been very…

Final.

'_Where they even ghosts? Ghosts are made of ectoplasm. They're obsessive, bound to Earth. That girl, Abigail, she was... cleaner.'_ No, that wasn't the right word. _'Peaceful? Innocent?'_ Another thought occurred to him. _'Is that the last time I'll ever see the Lunch Lady?'_ His eyes widened, head rising up.

'_I never even knew her name…'_ Danny thought sadly._ 'But… her last words! She said—'_

Cutting himself off, Danny abruptly remembered the smooth object in his left hand. Curling into himself, Danny brought his hand before his eyes and slowly opened his fist.

A gasp lodged in his throat. He stared at the object, thoroughly enraptured.

The object in his hand was a stone identical to the one Clockwork had traded with Legion for the lives of his friends. But though Danny had felt a pull to the crystal then, that was nothing compared to the sensation of actually holding it in his hands.

It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Perfectly spherical, it fit neatly in the palm of his hand. Infinite colours refracted from the crystal like from a multifaceted jewel, yet the stone didn't require light to produce its iridescence. It was like there existed a light within the stone, a multicoloured flame that swirled and danced of its own accord.

Yet that was simply the physical appearance of the stone. Danny couldn't find words to explain it, but the stone made him feel _light_.

It was inherently difficult to look at: Danny felt somehow that he was intruding on something personal and private by staring at the stone. But at the same time, the crystal drew him in; it pulled at his heart; it gave him the will to—

"WAA!" Quite unintentionally, Danny had lit his hands with the green fire of his ghostly half. The ectoplasm had encased the stone and, in a blinding burst of light and energy, exploded outward with enough ferocity to send Danny careening backward in the air, pin-wheeling wildly as he tumbled head-over-heels.

Even after the teen had again regained control of himself in mid-air, he was still blinking colourful spots out of his vision. That blast had been so powerful and yet he—

'_I'm in my human form, right?'_ Danny checked himself over: black hair, pale skin, t-shirt, jeans. Yup, definitely human. _'But… That was way too strong an ectoblast for my human form. Heck, it was strong even for my ghost form.'_

Danny looked at the stone in his hands in amazement.

"Did you do that?" He asked the stone, holding it up to one eye so he could better examine the dancing lights within.

_Take good care of my heart…_

The Lunch Lady's last words echoed in Danny's head and his expression turned troubled.

'_This… is it the Lunch Lady's heart?'_ If that were true, then…

Then what Legion wanted…

Danny drew in a hissing breath of air between clenched teeth.

There was no way he could let Legion get its paws on this crystal. No way.

'_Sam and Tucker?'_

There had to be another way to save them.

There had to.

With a flash of light and swirling rings, Danny had turned ghost and sped off through the Ghost Zone.

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The Ghost Portal closed with a smooth _'shhick'_ behind Danny as he stepped cautiously into Vlad's lab.

The room was lit: bright fluorescent bulbs expunged every shadow in the place, leaving Danny feeling unbearably exposed and vulnerable.

Shaking off the feeling that he was being watched, Danny clenched his fists and was about to shoot upward through the ceiling when the fuzzing sound of white noise came from somewhere to his left.

"_**Daniel, my boy."**_ Danny jumped at least a foot into the air as Vlad's voice crackled though the intercom set into the wall near the Ghost Portal. _**"Please be kind enough to join us in the foyer."**_

'_How did he know I was here?' _Danny panicked, then mentally slapped himself for his stupidity. _'Of course he knows, he's __**Vlad.**__'_ His palm dragged down over his face; then one eyebrow rose._** '**__Wait… '_us_'?'_ And it was with that thought that Danny knew he wouldn't be able to risk ignoring Vlad and just blasting out of the elder halfa's house. If Vlad had Jazz…

The feeling of something hard digging into his tightening fist reminded Danny that he was still holding the crystal.

'_Aw, man…'_ He searched fruitlessly for somewhere to keep the stone, but the HAZMAT suit of his ghost form had no pockets. And there was no way Danny was facing Vlad in his human form. He didn't even have a Fenton Thermos on him. No, he'd have to hold it. And hope Vlad never noticed it.

'_Yeah, good luck with that.'_

"_**Hurry up Daniel**__**. I am not feeling especially patient today."**_

"_Not feeling especially patient today."_ Danny mocked under his breath. The half-ghost jumped into the air, letting his feet mist into a spectral tail before turning intangible and shifting through the ceiling. "Pompous, ego-inflated…"

'_Wait… what room is the foyer?'_

Luckily, Danny didn't have to search too hard: he easily spotted Vlad's unmistakable fit-for-a-funeral suit in the entrance hall. It was only as he came closer that he saw Valerie unconscious on the floor.

"What did you do to her Plasmius?" Shifting back to tangibility and visibility, Danny dropped to the ground near Valerie's prone form and quickly knelt. He put a hand on her cheek, turning her face toward himself as he checked for a pulse. A sigh of relief left him when he found a steady heartbeat. Looking closer, Valerie didn't seem to have any bruises and cuts. She wasn't in her battlesuit, though.

"Relax, Daniel, she merely got a little shock. A little rest and she'll be back to her imperious self in no time." Vlad's tone was entirely too nonchalant and it made Danny bristle.

They locked gazes. Their height difference was exacerbated by Danny's kneeling position, but the young teen more than met the elder's stare. Danny's glare was nearly frigid in its intensity. On the other hand, Vlad was uncannily calm as he studied Danny's expression. The man's spindly fingers stroked the fur of the cat in his arms.

"If she's hurt, Plasmius, I swear…" Pointing a finger at Vlad, Danny bared his teeth in an unmistakable threat.

"Don't you listen, boy? I just told you she is perfectly all right. Besides, now is not exactly the time to be picking a fight with me, is it? I heard that your friends are missing."

"Sam and Tucker?" Danny forgot his rage for confusion. "How do you—"

Vlad merely gestured in Valerie's direction. "She came here with the misguided notion that she could blackmail me into telling her where your two friends are."

"Blackmail?" Danny echoed. His face scrunched in puzzlement. "What, did she find out how you appropriate the funds for all your ghost hunting equipment?" He asked. His question was largely sarcastic; after all, if Valerie hadn't figured out Vlad's slimy side after nearly a year…

"Close, Daniel." Vlad acknowledged, looking mildly impressed. "Very close, in fact."

Danny's mind clicked and he found his jaw dropping. "You're kidding me." Pushing off one knee, he found his feet and faced Vlad fully. "You've _got_ to be kidding me. She _knows?_"

"Congratulations, son, you _can _use your brain when prompted." Vlad nodded approvingly, ignoring Danny's annoyed eye-roll. "But I would not say that she knows _what_ I am. Rather, she knows I'm Plasmius and rationalizes the concept by viewing me as all-ghost. Much as she rationalized Danielle as a human girl with special abilities. Humans, Daniel, are surprisingly inflexible, and surprisingly imaginative in their inflexibility.

"You can relax." Vlad added, seeing that Danny was still tense. "She doesn't suspect you in the least."

And Danny did relax at that. At some point, his feet had left the floor in his agitation and he landed back on the stained hardwood. Turning to Valerie, Danny eyed Vlad uneasily out of the corner of one eye as he bent to pick up the hunter.

"Ok. I'll just… take her out of your hair then." He said warily.

Vlad suddenly grinned, and Danny's heart dropped.

"Oh just one more thing, my boy. This is the second time you've trespassed on my property and utilized my Ghost Portal without my permission. Now I understand your lack of manners is no doubt due to your idiot father's upbringing, but I will expect more courteous behaviour from you in the future. Is that clear, little badger?"

'_Did Vlad just ask me to say 'please' and 'thank you'?'_ Deciding to ignore the weirdness of that request, Danny instead focused on the jibe at his father. His eyes flashed with anger.

"I'm outta here, Vlad." Danny said shortly. Slinging Valerie over one shoulder as gently as he could, he turned to leave.

A black pulse of light was all the warning Danny had before Vlad—in full ghost form: new, billowing cape and all—materialized directly in front of him. Danny opened his mouth but before he could get out so much as a word Vlad did something he never saw coming. Pinning Danny with a severe expression, Vlad raised his hand and harshly backhanded the boy to the ground.

Danny somehow managed to keep Valerie from hitting her head, but wasn't so himself lucky as he hit the floor hard. Laying Valerie back down, he propped himself up on one elbow, putting a hand to his stinging cheek. His expression started off as shocked but was gradually being eaten away by outrage.

Furious anger rose hot and red within his chest and Danny snarled.

But before he could retaliate, Vlad had him by the collar, pulling him off his feet until the two half ghosts were practically nose-to-nose.

"Now, you listen here, Daniel. Outside of this house I will tolerate your impudence, your rude behaviour and even your immaturity. But when you are in _my _home you _will _adhere to my rules. You will respect my property and my rights. If you want to use something of mine you will _ask_. Is that clear?" Vlad's red eyes narrowed warningly.

"Oh, like you _respected_ my parents when you stole their inventions?" Danny quipped fiercely. An enraged look crossed Vlad's face, but Danny had already brought his feet up. Grasping the elder half ghost's forearms, Danny threw himself backward, letting the heel of his right foot connect solidly with Vlad's chin as he back-flipped out of the man's hold.

Landing in a deep crouch, Danny looked up just in time to see Vlad fire off a set of ectobeams at his head.

Danny didn't think, he just raised his arms and blocked.

His ectoplasmic shield snapped into existence around him, but in raising his arms he'd given Vlad a glimpse at the shimmering object in his left hand.

"Daniel, what is that in your hand?"

Danny backpedalled, shoving his left hand behind his back as he tried to reach Valerie. But Vlad wasn't going to let the teen get away that easily. Four towering clones surrounded Danny, each with two raised handfuls of crackling pink ectoplasm.

Danny eyed the duplicates nervously. Plasmius was a serious threat even on one of Danny's best days. He still lost more fights against the elder halfa than he won, and right now Danny wasn't in the mood to test his luck.

'_**Let me face him.'**_

Danny visibly winced as this odd thought stabbed through his mind, scattering his thoughts.

'_No.'_ Danny hoped he was simply having some weird internal conflict; this was no time to develop a split personality.

Unfortunately, the stray thought had distracted Danny long enough for Vlad to approach and grab his left wrist.

"No!" Danny cried. Grasping Vlad's wrist with his free hand, he pulled and struggled under the man's hold.

"Daniel this is no time to play the damaged hero. I am trying to help you!" Vlad said, and he sucked in a loud breath as he pried Danny's fingers apart enough to get a clear look at the iridescent sphere in the teen's hand.

But too many warning bells were going off in Danny's head. He could not, would not, let Vlad get his hands on the stone. He wouldn't!

The ectoblast Danny produced in his left hand was barely one of his weakest manifestations. Yet, just like before, the stone seemed to gather the energy and amplify it.

_**BOOM**_

The blinding flash of light and resulting explosion sent them both flying across the room, Danny recovering only minutely faster than Vlad. He dove for Valerie's unconscious figure, gathered her in his arms and bolted hell-for-leather out of the house before Plasmius could fully gather his wits and come after them.

In Danny's panicked flight, he never paused look back, and thus didn't realize that Vlad wasn't even attempting to make chase.

Vlad Masters, human, stood in the wreckage of his battered foyer. Maddie the cat trembled under a toppled couch; he paid her no mind.

"So it's true." Thin fingers dusted off an immaculate suit blazer. "Interesting."

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_End Chapter 20_

_To Be Continued…_

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Did anyone catch the 'Livin' Large' reference? Heh, I admit I'd forgotten about the portal in that episode, but… eh, maybe Vlad remodelled? XD

So sorry to everyone who wanted Vlad to get beaten up (I know I kinda did ^.^'). That man's got back-up plans for his back-up plans.

To you reviewers, thanks as always! **TitanQueen13, meranii-chan, Princess of Rose, PhantomMouse1115, love-toushi, Kirby77DP77, Felicity, Flashx11, LammySelfCJ, BrokenBloodDrops, Nylah, cyanbilbo, TexasDreamer01, ravenway146, PsychoticNari, sciencefreak330, chalicity, Thunderstorm101, Iaveina** and** PhantomBrat.**

**Adio!**


	21. Fudging the Issue

**Hiya!**

I am so sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out… if it strikes your fancy to get a more detailed report of why I've been absent for so long (along with more grovelling and begging for forgiveness ;p) then please check out my profile.

But right now, for you awesome readers who haven't given up on this story, I won't waste any more space: let's get on to Chapter 21!

**Disclaimer:** Ownership of Danny Phantom goes to Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 21 — **__Fudging the Issue_

Jack Fenton was on the verge of a scientific discovery of epic proportions. He could feel it in his gut.

Oh-m… nope, that was just the empanadas he'd had for lunch backing up.

Turning off the blowtorch in his hand, Jack flipped his welding helmet up even as a few lingering sparks flickered by his face. Grinning hugely, he leaned in to examine his latest creation. This invention was really a stroke of genius, he thought to himself as he attempted to cool down the heated metal with quick puffs of air. Those ghosts thought they could put Jack Fenton on ice? A wrench in his works? A monkey in his… plans? Well, they got another thing coming! No ghost could hide from Jack Fenton: he had the wit of a fox, the eye of an eagle, the nose of a… a… Well, the point was that Jack Fenton was a professional ghost hunter and would not be stopped in his quest to rid the world of ghosts! They already knew to fear him; after all, he had a ghost portal in his own basement and he'd never seen a ghost dare to try and come out of it. That's right! Those malefactors were too afraid to challenge—

The front door slammed closed upstairs, bringing Jack out of his happy musings.

"_I'M HOME!_" Came Jazz's distant announcement.

"Just on time!" Jack enthused. "Now I can blather on about my invention!" He practically exploded from his chair and bounded up the stairs.

Jazz was standing in the kitchen, frowning at the eclectic collection of ghost weapons and papers scattered over the table. Her head snapped up when he came hurdling in and she looked somewhat nervous, but Jack ignored that as he held up the object in his hands.

"Jazzypants! Look at this!" He effused.

Jazz stared at him, then the object in his hands, then the cluttered island, then back at him.

"Dad, why are—…" Whatever she was about to ask was abruptly swallowed as her eyes fixed on the object in his hands. "Is that a car jack?"

"Not just any jack! This is the FENTON Jack!" He proclaimed, holding the invention aloft.

Jazz coughed into her fist.

"Well…. uh, that's… great, Dad!" She said with good humour. "So… uh… what does it do?"

Jack goggled. His daughter was never interested in his or Maddie's gadgets. A wide smile nearly split his face as he realized what was going on: his daughter was finally getting interested in the family business! "Well!" he blustered. "The Fenton Jack is guaranteed to lift any ghostly object in the air, regardless of how heavy it is. Me and your mother created it to get past the ghost-human shield surrounding the museum!"

"But… uh… doesn't the museum's shield extend below the ground?" Jazz wondered astutely, much to Jack's growing excitement. "How will you be able to lift the shield if you can't get under it?"

"That's a very good question, Jazzerincess!" Jack praised. "And you should ask your mother about that, 'cause she's in charge of that part of the plan."

Jazz gave a small, thin smile and her eyes dropped to the Fenton Bazooka leaning innocently against the counter.

"That reminds me!" Jack added. "Now Jazzy, I know you might be a budding ghost hunter, but you know you're not supposed to be messing around with our gadgets." He gestured at all the weapons scattered across the table.

"But I didn't leave this here!" She immediately defended herself, and then gasped as though regretting her words.

"You didn't?" Jack puzzled. "But if you didn't, and Maddie didn't, then… Oh! It must've been Danny!" He grinned: his son had fought off a dangerous ghost yesterday and now he was interested in the Fenton ghost hunting gear. It seemed like _both _his kids were getting into the family business. Huzzah! "DANNEH!" Jack bellowed.

"Ahh… He must be in the washroom!" Jazz said quickly. "Yeah! He's probably in the washroom, which is why he didn't answer you immediately; it's not like he left the house or anything. Nope, 'cause he knows better than to do that… yup…" She popped the 'p' on 'yup' and rocked back on her heels, awkwardly avoiding eye contact with Jack.

Jack huffed. "He better not have left! He's supposed to be grounded! Which…" he added reluctantly, "Also means no messing around with the ghost gear either!"

Striding into the room came, not Danny, but Maddie Fenton. She sighed, pulling off the hood of her jumpsuit and adjusting her red goggles around her neck. "Jack dear," She said, sending him a smile that never failed to make him grin stupidly. "Did I hear you calling Danny?"

"Yep. He's not answering though."

"Because he's in the bathroom." Jazz was quick to put in.

Maddie send their daughter an odd glance. "Yes, well… I haven't seen him all day. Is he recovering all right after that ghost attack?" She asked worriedly. Jazz nodded in confirmation and Maddie let out a sigh of released tension. Jack smiled sympathetically. He knew she had wanted to stay home with the kids, but work had pulled them away very early in the morning. They had spent hour after frustrating hour trying to take down the ghost-human shield around Amity Park's Museum of Natural History without success. Jack had returned home in the early evening to start working on the Fenton Jack, while Maddie had stayed back to try and explain their failure to the Amity Bureau of Investigation. He was extremely grateful to his wife for that last part: government types and Jack Fenton had never gotten along well.

All in all, it had been a very trying day. To top it all off, they hadn't even seen a single ghost, meaning no possibility of venting some misplaced aggression.

But speaking of ghosts…

"What is all this doing on the counter?" Maddie asked, looking at the assortment of ghost weapons.

"Danny's takin' an interest in ghost hunting!" Jack beamed.

"He's not supposed to be touching the weapons vault." Maddie said with a frown as she studied the very potent assortment of weaponry her son had apparently laid out on the table. Was this because of the ghost attack yesterday? She wondered. Maybe his pride was still bruised after Vlad had saved him. Maddie knew her son and Vlad Masters didn't get along. In fact, she was rather leery of the man as well— though for reasons that her son had no knowledge of, thankfully. But even still, Vlad had a good heart. After all, hadn't he saved Danny's life twice now?

Striding over to the table, she swept one of the papers off the top, looking at it in interest. "This is Danny's handwriting isn't it?"

Jazz looked over her mother's shoulder, a distinctly anxious air about her. "Uh… I dunno. It might be Dad's."

"No, I recognize Danny's handwriting. Look at this Jack." And Maddie handed her husband the paper in her hands. "It's a map of the Ghost Zone."

Jack's eyes widened and his grip loosened around the paper to hold it almost reverently. "A map of the Ghost Zone! Suffering spooks, how did Danny get a hold of this?"

"I don't think he found it, Jack," Maddie said slowly. "It looks like he _made_ it."

Jack was suddenly bursting with pride. He swept at his watering eyes. "My own son! Making his first ghost hunting map!"

"How do you know for sure that that's a map of the Ghost Zone?" Jazz was suddenly between her parents, snatching the paper from her father's hands and looking at them with wide eyes. "None of us have ever been in the Ghost Zone." She reminded them. "So how could Danny know what it looks like?"

"Well, your father and I have been in the Ghost Zone once," Maddie revealed and surprise painted Jazz's face. "And it does say 'Map of the Ghost Zone' across the top."

Jazz hesitated, and glanced down at the paper. Lips pursed her lips as she saw that even despite the ragged, scribbling penmanship of uneven letters that blurred into one another, the words across the top of the page still undeniably read 'Map of the Ghost Zone'. She internalized her blossoming exasperation at Danny's epic failure at subtlety and quickly rallied. "But Danny's probably just playing around. You know, as a teenager it is very important to have a fertile imagination. Danny's probably fascinated by the idea of a Ghost Zone so he drew that as a way of…expressing his… interest?"

Just then, as though on cue, Danny came ambling into the kitchen, rubbing his head and looking somewhat worse for wear with his rumpled clothes and mussed hair.

"Danny! There you are, m'boy!" Jack almost jumped on his son, putting an arm around his shoulders even as said boy looked up in alarm. Jack was about to praise his son's interest in ghosts when he spotted a large purpling bruise on the teen's cheek.

"Danny! What happened to your face?" Jack exclaimed. Immediately, Maddie was at Danny's side, holding his chin in her hand and twisting his head to get a better look at the bruise.

Danny recoiled, slapping her hands away. "Mo-om! I'm fine, just ran into a door by accident. It's no big deal. I, uh,… I got homework to do…"

"You've been getting hurt a lot recently." She said with concern and looked hurt when Danny stiffened and stepped away from her. "I just want to know you're okay. After last night—"

"I don't know what Vlad told you, but it was just some ghost trashing the lab. I didn't even do anything, just ducked behind a table." His tone was bitter. "The ghost shot a blast over me and something fell on my head. I'm fine now. Can I go?" All this was blurted in a rush, and by the end of it he was already inching towards the door.

Maddie was about to hound Danny with more questions when Jack jumped in. "Not until you tell us what you were planning with all these ghost weapons, son! I know you're interested, but even I have trouble with some of these weapons, you should probably start small with a wrist ray or something—" Noticing his wife's narrowed eyes, Jack backpedalled. "Or not at all! Taking weapons from the vault was very irresponsible of you, young man. Very, very, bad." He waggled a finger at Danny, who simply arched an eyebrow at him.

Jack had worn that exact same 'Are you done yet?' look — closely related to the 'Can I go now?' stare — for much of his youth and recognized it well on his son's face, but he chose to ignore it.

Maddie however, was not so willing to let the topic go. "And why were you drawing a map of the Ghost Zone!" she gestured at the paper still clutched in Jazz's hands.

Now, Jack knew his son was a smart kid. And he'd been on the receiving end of Danny's smart comments enough times to know the boy's tongue was a little too sharp for his own good. But as Jack watched, he was graced with the unusual occurrence of seeing his son completely speechless as the blood drained from his face.

This led Jack to take a closer look at his son and what he saw gave him pause. Danny's clothes were stained, his hair was a mess and more than that, he looked absolutely exhausted. Shadows lined the undersides of his eyes and his posture was too stiff to be natural. Not to mention the bruise across his face: Danny must've been pretty out of it to have walked face-first into a door hard enough to cause that.

"I…wa…um… I was, uh…" Danny stammered as he grasped for words and Jack watched as the teen's eyes flitted about nervously between him and Maddie before settling on Jazz, "playing around?"

There passed some sort of silent communication between his two children that bewildered Jack. He might not have been the most observant guy, but he certainly knew that Danny and Jazz didn't usually play the chummy sibling routine this well. Whatever it was ended quickly though, as Danny tore his gaze away from Jazz and looked up at Jack and Maddie.

"Yeah, it's not a real map." Danny's tone had done a complete 180. What was once panicky and uncertain was now calm and self-assured. "I was drawing it for art class. The teacher wanted us to do an abstract representation of our family. I drew the Ghost Zone because sometimes it's like our family really _is _from a different world."

This explanation made sense to Jack, but Maddie was still unconvinced.

"Then what about the ghost weapons?" She pressed. Jack nodded vigorously, backing up his wife. He'd forgotten all about that.

"Research." Danny shrugged, looking away evasively. "I'm sorry about the mess. I'll clean it up right away. Just… Jazz, can I _talk_ to you for a sec?" Danny said meaningfully, pointing at the door.

"Sure." Jazz agreed without hesitation and the two teens quickly left the room before Maddie or Jack could get another word in edgewise.

Jack scratched his head while his wife sighed heavily.

"Dan—!" Maddie started.

"No Mads. Let him go." Jack attempted to soften his interruption with a benign smile as he made his way to he fridge. Opening the door, he poked around for some ham… or fudge, whichever he found first. "Hounding him isn't going to help, anyway. I know, I was his age once." He chuckled.

Maddie didn't reply for a while. Instead, she slid wearily into a chair, staring at the mess of papers and weaponry before her.

"Honestly Jack, I just don't know what's gotten into our kids recently." She sighed at length. "Danny's been acting oddly and since when did Jazz start making excuses for him? I just feel like they're pulling away from us…"

Jack shot a look over his shoulder at his wife, sad that all this pained her. But truth be told, he wasn't very concerned. Being a teenager was tough and it was a time for big changes in life; that's just the way it was. Besides, Danny and Jazz didn't have to deal with half the things that _he_ had deal with as a teen, and that in itself was a reassurance. After all, he'd turned out fine, right?

His hand hit a large block of something near the back of the fridge and he grinned. Paydirt.

"Maddie, look, I know I'm not the best at these sorts of things, but everything's going to be fine." He insisted as he extricated the rectangular pound of fudge from the fridge and began unwrapping it. "Jazz is bound for great things and Danny… well, you remember how he protected Jazz from that boy a few months ago?" Jack huffed, still smarting over the fact that he hadn't gotten the chance to deck his daughter's hooligan ex-boyfriend.

Maddie smiled softly in remembrance and Jack, bolstered, pushed forward.

"See?" He appeased, popping a piece of chocolaty goodness in his mouth before placing his free arm around his wife's shoulders. "We raised good kids. They'll be fine, we just need to—"

A loud, piercing screech interrupted whatever Jack was about to say. It was a credit to their nerves that neither of the elder Fenton's so much as twitched at the sudden bloodcurdling shriek of their bizarre doorbell. Instead they simply raised their heads with identical looks of mild interest. Then, a spark of excitement lit Jack's eyes and he jumped to his feet, dropping the forgotten fudge on the counter.

"I'll get it!" He yelled, bounding off, leaving Maddie alone and pensive.

Yanking back on the doorknob with gusto, Jack threw open the door and greeted the man standing on the porch with a boisterous hello.

"Package for Mister Jack Fenton," Was the monotonous reply of the mailman who held out a wrapped parcel and pad to Jack.

"Oh boy! This must be the new ecto-splicer I ordered in the _Ghastly Gadgets_ magazine! I can't wait to see what it does!" Jack eagerly signed off on the pad and handed it back to the mailman, practically tearing the parcel out of the man's atrophied grip. Stopping just before he closed the door, Jack peered closely at the man. "Gee, are all of you guys this pale? You mailmen really need to start getting more sun!" And with those parting words of advice, Jack slammed the door shut.

"Maddie! The new ecto-splicer is here, I'm going down to the lab to check it out!" Jack yelled as he passed through the kitchen to get to the basement lab.

"Hm? Sure, honey, just make sure you come up in half an hour for dinner." Came the distracted reply.

Jack saw that Maddie was gazing, entranced, at one of the papers that Danny had left scattered across the table. But he couldn't be bothered with that right now: he just got new ghost hunting gear!

Rushing down the stairs and into the lab, Jack was humming to himself as he cleared a spot on his over crowded workbench for the package. It was a pretty small box, maybe the size of his fist, and had the words FRAGILE stamped across it in red letters. Jack wasted no time in slicing the top open and reaching inside.

"Huh?" He frowned when his fingers closed around, not a thin metallic blade but something long and tubular. Jack drew the object out and frowned in bafflement at the corked test tube in his hands.

"What's this?" Jack jiggled the object. Inside the glass cylinder was a single thread of what looked like hair: black, and relatively long.

Putting aside the tube, Jack looked back at the parcel. Inside was a thick sheaf of bubble wrap, which he pulled out. Something clinked, tumbling out of the plastic, and Jack spotted a second, identical test tube at the bottom of the box. Tilting the box, Jack caught the delicate object between his thumb and forefinger before pulling it up to his eyes. A lone white hair was bowed against the side of the tube. Glancing down, Jack confirmed that the box was now empty. All that had been in it were these two test tubes. Jack held both up, one in each hand, next to each other.

They held one strand of hair apiece: one jet black and the other a bleached white even brighter than his teeth.

Jack slid the tubes into a rack at the far end of the table. They slid into the holder easily, tinkling lightly against similar test tubes that held a variety of fluorescent precipitates. He flopped down onto a stool, pouting as he put his chin in his hands. He was disappointed that the parcel hadn't held his coveted ecto-splicer. Nevertheless, he didn't throw the hairs away. Obviously someone had ordered them if they came in the mail. Maybe Maddie needed them for something.

Weird that she'd used _his _name to order them though.

Jack sighed and then swept the empty package into the trash so that he'd have room to put his elbows on the steel table. He'd really been looking forward to checking out his new ecto-splicer.

But… an object in his peripheral vision caught his eye and Jack immediately perked up as he remembered his latest invention. Pulling the Fenton Jack closer to himself, he stared at the object happily.

"Just needs one more thing…" Tongue stuck between his teeth, Jack reached under the table and rummaged around for something. "Aha!" He grinned, as his hand found what he was looking for.

With a flourish, Jack stripped the backing off the sticker in his hand then slapped it onto the invention.

The word 'FENTON' was now emblazoned in electric green on the base of the Fenton Jack.

"Perfect!"

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Jazz stared in awe at the crystal in her brother's hand. It was mesmerizing. And, when he allowed her to hold it, she cradled it reverently in both hands as she gazed into its iridescent depths. Completely captivated by the object in her hands, she only barely caught the words her brother was telling her.

Something about the ghost in the museum wanting this crystal in exchange for Sam and Tucker and Danny not wanting to give it to him—that it was too powerful to give away. Jazz could understand not wanting to part with such a beautiful thing; she'd barely held it for a handful of seconds and already she was reluctant to return it to her brother.

For Danny's part, it had been an impulsive decision to tell Jazz about the stone. He'd done it in spite of the nagging voice in his head telling him it was a bad idea. But with both Tucker and Sam kidnapped by the museum ghost, Jazz was now his primary confidant. Well, it felt nice, at least, to share some of this weirdness with his sister.

"I think it's some sort of amplifier." He said, voice barely over a murmur as they huddled together, holding a quiet conference in the narrow space under the staircase.

Seeing that Jazz was not going to drop the gem in his waiting palm, Danny raised an eyebrow before simply plucking it from her hands, much to her chagrin.

"When I accidentally shot an ecto-beam through it, it caused an explosion so big both me and Vlad were knocked back." He continued.

"Wait… Vlad?" Jazz's attention snapped away from the stone that Danny was rolling between his fingers and she looked up to his vague expression.

Danny sighed, nodding. "Thanks to… the fruitloop, our portal is kaput. Crispy, well-done style. So I had to use _his_ to get to the Ghost Zone."

"So that's how you got that bruise." His sister said softly, tilting her head to look at his cheek.

Feeling self-conscious under her sad gaze, Danny turned away slightly, trying to cover the bruise with the longer sections of his hair. Realizing that his hair was nearly touching his chin, Danny made a mental note to get a haircut soon. "I'm fine; it hardly hurts and it'll be gone in a couple of hours. I'm more worried about Valerie." His eyebrows furrowed with concern. "She was unconscious throughout the fight, but by the time I got her back to her place she was starting to get up—She didn't see me though." He added quickly at Jazz's alarmed look.

"Valerie is the Red Hunter…" Jazz shook her head with a rueful grin. "I still can't get over that. And you knew all along?"

Danny shrugged. "Pretty much."

"Even while you were dating her?"

He flushed, ducking his head and bringing one hand to the back of his neck. "Look, Valerie's nice, okay?"

"Even with the whole 'I'm going a waste Danny Phantom' thing?" Jazz's eyebrows arched.

"Yeah, well, everyone's got their issues." He waved it off.

Jazz just chuckled. "You know, little brother, sometimes I wonder…" she trailed off, shaking her head. "Nevermind. Let's go have dinner. You haven't eaten all day have you? You must be hungry."

Realizing his last meal had been an unfinished bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, Danny was, in fact, rather hungry. Nodding, he led the way to the kitchen.

Upon entering the room though, his eyes widened at the sight of his mother flicking through his ghost files. Remembering how he'd left practically the entire printed version of his ghost encyclopaedia on the table, Danny had to bite back a curse at his own stupidity as he lunged forward.

"Hey!" He squawked, grabbing the papers from his mother's hands. He covered his panic by forcing his best indignant look onto his face. "That's my stuff!" Quick as lightning, he'd gathered the rest of the papers on the desk and held them close to his chest.

"Danny…" His mother was looking at him as though she'd never seen him before. "Where did you get all that information?"

"The internet, 'course." He bit out.

"Don't lie to me." She reprimanded sternly and Danny winced. "Some of that information is very specific to the ghosts in Amity Park. But the information is much more detailed than even what your father and I gathered. Where did you get it?"

Danny's breath was quickening. He wasn't ready to tell his secret and his mother was backing him into a corner.

He couldn't tell her the truth, but what sort of lie would sound believable?

He didn't know. He couldn't think of anything. Jazz was standing in the corner, looking at him helplessly.

His mouth opened, then closed. His mind drew a complete blank as it reached, reached for any excuse. A speck of yellow flashed in the corner of his eye.

Then the anger came.

And it saved him.

"I can't believe you went through my stuff!" His yelled. This sudden explosion of rage had Maddie leaning back with shock clear on her features. Even Jazz stared at him. "This is private, and it's none of your business! And why the… why're you choosing _now_ of all times to become all observant, huh? Is it 'cause it has to do with ghosts? I get suspended for getting into a fight and you want to interrogate me about _this_? You never see anything that's going on—going on right in front of your face! You don't care—except when it involves ghosts! You and Dad both! That block of fudge probably got more of his attention then I have all week! There are a thousand—_million_—bigger things going on but—"

"Danny!" Jazz had crossed the kitchen and seized his upper arm, halting his speech as she gave him a blazing _'What the hell are you doing?' _glare. "Mom, Danny doesn't mean any of that. He's just upset at being grounded and he was feeling really sick yesterday. There are all these rumours going on about him at Casper High and he never even meant to hit that boy at school. Dash is always bullying Danny, Mom. This is the first time Danny's ever stuck up for himself and he ended up getting suspended. Those ghost files are not important; I bet Danny just made up half the stuff on them. Right, Danny?" She looked at him pointedly, gripping his shoulder to the point of near pain. His right shoulder. Danny felt an electric jolt run through the arm.

His head was bowed. He was still feeling the sulky after-effects of his rage. "Yeah… yeah," Danny groused.

"Go put those papers in your room." Jazz suggested quietly. "I'll put the weapons back."

Recognizing an out when he got one, Danny wasted no time in fleeing the room.

Maddie blinked at the door in her son's wake, before snapping back to herself and turning shocked eyes to her daughter. "Danny… is bullied at school?"

Jazz sighed. "Yes, Mom."

"How long has this been going on?" _'How long…?' _The fact that she had to _ask_ such a question…

"Long enough." Jazz's answer was clipped, and didn't give half the information Maddie wanted. But for some reason, Maddie couldn't bring herself to question her daughter further; and she simply watched as Jazz gathered the various ecto-guns on the table—hefting the bazooka over her shoulder with surprising ease—and left the room.

Maddie passed a hand over her face to rest her knuckles under her nose. Glancing over, she saw Jack's discarded block of fudge sitting on the table and remembered his flippant words regarding Danny.

Well, she didn't care if Jack thought everything was going to be okay. She was not going to let her children keep falling through her fingers.

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Dinner was a quiet affair. The Fenton family sat around the table chewing on somewhat overcooked spaghetti. Maddie, Jazz and Danny were lost in their own thoughts, while Jack was mostly focused on his food.

Maddie and Jack had started the meal with a passionate exchange about ghosts and their inherent malignancy. For them it was only idle chatter; yet, in their usual way, they both grew increasingly heated and louder as they talked, making it sound more like an argument than anything else. The entire conversation made Danny tense and twitchy, to the point that his muscles were beginning to ache from being held too stiffly. He'd contained himself though, keeping his head down and concentrating on his food—with what he felt was an admirable show of willpower—until his parents finally calmed down and began eating themselves.

Danny prodded the gummy noodles. He was feeling guilty for blowing up at his mother earlier; and the emotion worsened every time he saw her glancing at him with distressed eyes.

At least Jazz had stopped him before he'd said anything really stupid. Not like what he _had _said was much better. What the heck was _wrong _with him lately anyway? His temper… it was like throwing water on hot oil: it kept exploding everywhere at the smallest things. He never thought he was that short-fused.

Looking up through his lashes he caught Jazz's eye and sent her a sheepishly grateful smile, which she returned with an upward quirk of her lips. There was an all-too-familiar glint in her eye though which made Danny uneasy: it was the exact same look Jazz had given him before she'd shoved him into a room with Spectra the 'guidance counsellor'.

'_**Sticking her**__** meddling nose where it doesn't belong.'**_

Danny winced into his forkful of food. That thought had been a little harsh.

'_Jazz is not meddling; she's just concerned. I wi__ll not get angry at her because she is trying to help.' _He resolved.

'_**Help or hinder? The intent does not match the outcome.'**_

Danny shook away that train of thought.

That wasn't important. No… something else… he should think about something else…

'_Oh hey! Wasn't there something I was supposed to ask Dad? Something someone important was talking about...'_ Something someone important had told him?… The most important person he'd seen for a few days was Clockwork…

And in a rush Danny remembered his visit to the Time Master: the conversation, the mirror…

His eyes widened.

"Hey Dad?" he asked hesitantly and gained not only his father's attention but his mother's and Jazz's as well.

"What is it, son?" Jack asked jovially and some of the tension left Danny's shoulders. His dad was still in a good mood. That was a relief. It was always much harder to ask his father things when he was upset.

"I was just wondering," Danny observed his father curiously. "I heard this, uh, name of something recently and I wanted to ask you what it was."

Jack made an accommodating gesture with his spoon as he twirled his spaghetti.

"Well, um, do you know anything about…" Oh, what had Clockwork called it? "A night of aban… abandon?" Not quite that. "Abanon…?"

"The _Night of Abaddon_?"

A loud clattering reverberated in the room: Jack's fork and spoon falling from his hands as he breathed those words. Maddie inhaled sharply and Jazz just stared in confusion. Danny slowly put his own fork down as he looked between his mother and father in bewilderment.

The loud slap of Jack Fenton's hands hitting the table made Danny jump and he gasped when his father suddenly leaned in close to look straight into his eyes. "Where did you hear that term, Danny?" Jack's voice was so extraordinarily serious that Danny simply gaped at his father for a moment.

"WHERE DID YOU HEAR IT?" Jack bellowed.

Danny yelped and started backward, nearly falling sideways off his chair. A thrill of fear ran through him as he had the sudden, irrational thought that his dad was seeing _Phantom_ and not Fenton. He should have kept his mouth shut. Should have at least asked Jazz first—

"I-I read…" Danny felt more than saw his father's skepticism and stuttered, rapidly changing his story mid-speech, "—saw this poster about a history fair. Then some guy came up behind me and said that Amity Park's past shouldn't be celebrated and he mentioned the Night of Abbadon." He fell uncomfortably into the lie, with sweaty palms and an uncertain voice. Seeing his father still seemed to be expecting further explanation, Danny pulled his trump card. "I think the guy was a ghost."

Strangely, this news didn't seem to excite his father. Jack's eyes were intense, but they were unfocused; and Danny had the distinct impression that his father was thinking deeply—or, maybe remembering something. Danny shifted and, with this movement, Jack snapped out of his stupor. The man tore his napkin from the collar of his jumpsuit and tossed it onto his empty plate as he rose to his feet.

"I'll be in the lab," he said, turning abruptly and crossing the kitchen. The door to the basement slammed loudly behind him.

Danny's heart was still drumming against his ribs as he looked up and around at the people still remaining at the table. Jazz's expression mirrored his confusion. His mother though, avoided his gaze completely.

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_End Chapter 21_

_To Be Continued…_

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That's it for now! But there is good news. The next chapter is almost finished, so, barring any event of _force majeure,_ I should be able to post a new instalment in 2 weeks. Promise!

Thank you, thank you, _thank you_ to everyone who reviewed; you can never underestimate the power of a single reviewer to motivate a person to write! Although I didn't answer all the reviews for the last chapter, I will definitely do it for this chapter. To my reviewers: **TitanQueen13, Princess of Rose, dragondancer123, sciencefreak330, interestedbuteasilydistracted** (times 2! :D)**, Curious Nightmare, Kit Ninja, starsinjars, aslan333, seantriana, Fro52 **and **The Moon Wolf!**

**Adio!**


	22. Amity's Bloody History

**Hiya!**

I'm back again, as promised! Have fun and please review (pweeaze?)

**Disclaimer:** …Nah

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 22**__** — **__Amity's Bloody History_

"Danny, Jazz, would you come with me into the family room? We need to talk."

Danny and Jazz exchanged glances at their mother's sombre tone. After their father's explosive reaction to Danny mentioning the Night of Abaddon, what remained of their dinner had passed in dead silence. It was only now, after the table had been cleared and the dishes neatly stacked in the washer, that Maddie was breaking the strained lull that had fallen after Jack had left the room.

Maddie led the way into the family room and the two siblings followed. The door to the basement laboratory was still conspicuously shut, and as Danny passed by he couldn't even hear any of the usual mini-explosions that regularly emitted from the lab whenever his dad was down there. He raised a hand, strongly tempted to turn the door invisible and just glimpse what his father was doing downstairs… But no, Danny drew his hand back. It didn't feel right.

Last to enter the sitting room, Danny saw that his mother had taken a seat on one end of the couch, while Jazz was curled up on their dad's armchair, her feet tucked to one side. Danny sank onto the other end of the couch, pulling his own feet up so he could cross his legs comfortably as he turned to face his mother.

Knowing there no point in beating around the bush, he cut straight to the point, "Mom, is this about Dad?"

Maddie sighed, indigo eyes distant. She took a breath, gathering herself before interlaced her fingers and looked straight up at them: first meeting Danny's eyes, then Jazz's. "Yes," she affirmed. "But this is a very serious topic. It isn't something you can tell other people about. I'm sorry Danny, but that includes Sam and Tucker." She favoured him with a brief, sympathetic smile.

Danny's faith in his two best friends was beyond reproach. He'd known both Sam and Tucker for nearly a decade and they shared everything. Even his parents treated them like they were extensions of the family. For Maddie to ask Danny to keep whatever she was going to say secret from Sam and Tucker… It… well… Danny didn't know _what _that meant. It had never happened before. Even the Ops centre and the family's jet plane weren't a secret from Sam and Tucker.

Both Jazz and Danny agreed to keep the secret, the latter noticeably more hesitant than the former, and Maddie nodded.

"Good. Now, this is something we have never talked about before. Your father doesn't like to talk about his past. It is… a very painful topic." Maddie took a breath. "We should start at the beginning. Your father and his parents were raised here in Amity Park."

"Really?" Danny interrupted. Resting an elbow on the armrest of the couch, he propped his cheek up on his knuckles. "I thought Dad was born in a log cabin… Where he had to eat horse meat." The teen shuddered, remembering his father's tales. A quick glace to the side affirmed that Jazz thought the same as she nodded, mild disgust twisting her mouth.

Maddie looked amused. "Yes, he was born in a log cabin outside the city. But that was only the place where his family would spend their summers. For most of the year they lived in Amity. Now, I don't suppose you know this, but ghost related professions runs in your father's half of the family."

"Oh yeah, I know." Danny nodded vigorously. "For a school project we had to look up our ancestors and I found John Fenton Nightingale," he offered in answer to his mother's questioning glance.

"Yes, he was one of your father's more illustrious relatives." Maddie said thoughtfully. "But what I want emphasize is that not all of your father's relatives were ghost hunters."

Jazz and Danny stirred. "No?" Jazz asked.

Maddie shook her head. "No. His mother, for example, was a medium for spirits."

Danny cocked his head in confusion but Jazz leaned forward, intrigued, "A spirit medium? They actually existed?" she wondered.

"Oh yes, they _exist,_" corrected their mother.

"Wait… She was a what, now?" Danny puzzled.

"A spirit medium," Jazz elaborated in what Danny called her 'I'm going to educate you now' voice, "is someone who can see and talk to ghosts. I guess that's kind of redundant since we now know that everyone can do that. The main point is that a spirit mediums put ghosts to rest."

"To rest?" Danny echoed, an odd look in his eyes.

"Yes," Maddie nodded. "It is a completely unexplored area of parapsychology: fascinating yet completely inexplicable. It makes no logical sense how the encounter with a mere human—medium or no—would cause complete degradation of a paranormal entity's ambient energies—in fact, their entire genetic make-up down to the atoms. Can you imagine the sheer amount of energy that sort of decomposition would require? I would have loved to study the phenomenon further but, unfortunately, I have never seen a sending with my own eyes…"

Danny's eyes shifted to the side in the direction of his sister and the siblings shared a look.

"Um… Mom? What were you saying?" Danny prodded when it seemed she'd lost herself in thought.

Maddie looked up. "What? Oh, yes. Right. Well, disregarding the scientific improbabilities for the moment, your grandmother believed strongly that it was her duty to put ghosts to rest. But this caused… difficulties: between Jack and his parents, between his mother and father…" she sighed.

"What had become apparent, and was becoming more and more difficult to ignore with each passing year, was the effect of being a medium on the human body. Being a medium requires the person to have a strong connection between this world and the next; this effort taxes the fragile human body, mind and heart." Maddie continued at length.

" 'The next world?' Do you mean—" Danny began.

"No, not the Ghost Zone." Maddie said, inferring correctly what her son had been about to ask. "A spirit medium sooths a ghost's natural obsessions and regrets and, in theory, breaks all ties between them and these known planes of existence. However, if you are not born with this gift, the strain of putting a ghost to rest can kill you. Even your grandmother occasionally lost consciousness. Sometimes she experienced dangerous seizures and was quite prone to severe illness. It put great strain on your father and grandfather; it didn't help that the town ostracized her and feared her gifts."

Danny felt like a stone had lodged in his throat. His grandmother had talked to ghosts—had _befriended_ them. Why had he never heard about this before?

"What… What happened?" Danny asked slowly. He knew his grandparents on his father's side weren't alive. But it had been a fact that had existed ever since he could remember. He'd never asked his parents for any details.

"There were risks involved in what your grandmother was doing. Ghosts would come flocking to her to have their souls healed. And many were not benign. She was able to handle the spirits most times. But it eventually caused a rift between her and your grandfather. Your father was just a child at the time, barely old enough to understand why his parents were always fighting." Maddie gave a short exhale, a small sign of compassion for the man she loved. "That was when his hatred of ghosts started. But it wasn't that your father wanted to hunt them. On the contrary, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with them."

Two sets of eyebrows shot up at that.

"Dad wanted nothing to do with ghosts?" Danny boggled.

A soft smile turned up the edges of Maddie's lips. "It is hard to believe, isn't it?" both teens nodded vigorously. "But it's true. Your grandfather made certain to keep your father away from ghosts. He was not allowed to see them, much less hunt them. So, by consequence, he never saw much of his mother either. I believe your father wondered if his mother was chasing invisible manifestations of her mind. He struggled. After all, it is difficult to fight rumours questioning your mother's sanity when you yourself are starting to believe them."

Here, Jazz shifted guiltily and Danny glanced at her, remembering how she had long accused their parents of being something southward of eccentric before she'd seen a ghost with her own eyes.

"Your dad wanted to be an architect." Maddie continued, "to create strange and unusual designs. He once showed me the most incredible sketch he'd made in his childhood…" She shook her head. "Anyway. There came a time that your father was so fed up with the everything that he ran away from home."

"He ran away? That could not have ended well." Jazz criticized.

"How old was he?" Danny wondered.

"Sixteen." Maddie answered. "He took his parents' car and drove off into the sunset. Didn't return for two weeks."

"Wow…" Danny marvelled at his father's gall. He couldn't say he'd never thought of running away: the thought had occurred to him during his most nightmarish visions of possible reactions his parents could have to his ghost half. But thinking about it and actually going through with it were two completely different things. And his dad hadn't had the added advantage of ghost powers to sustain him.

But while Danny was looking somewhat impressed, Maddie appeared pained. "I don't think your father ever forgave himself for that."

Danny and Jazz both sent her questioning glances.

"No one knows what really happened. Not even your father. But while he was gone, ghosts entered the town and razed the place to the ground." She spoke calmly and the lack of inflection in her tone only made the story more horrifying. "Something had swept through the place, setting fire to the trees, tearing up the ground and killing… everyone. Your father had come home, anger spent and ready to make amends, only to find everything he'd ever known, everyone he cared about, gone." Maddie's eyes closed.

Danny's hands had clenched into tight fists. He had expected something bad when he had first asked his father about the Night of Abaddon—after seeing that vision in Clockwork's mirror he'd have been foolish not to—but he hadn't expected _this_. He knew that what had levelled Amity Park had been no ghost. It had been Legion.

And if he didn't stop the beast then history would repeat itself.

And yet…

"Did Dad ever find out what happened? I mean, why the ghost attacked Amity Park, how they got it to stop?" He asked. In his mind, he begged his mother for a good answer. Something, anything, that could help him with his fight now.

But Maddie just shook her head. "Your dad ran home and found his father dead, and his mother hanging on by a thread. She had a jewel in her hand."

"A jewel?" Danny's head snapped to his mother, his eyes narrowing.

"Yes…" Maddie remembered. "He showed it to me once. It was a beautiful thing. Shone like a rainbow."

Here Jazz sent Danny a sharp look that he ignored.

"Your father was devastated. He had arrived early enough that his mother was still conscious, but too late to do anything to help. He was helpless to do anything but hold her hand and watch her pass."

The three Fentons spent a moment in silence. Sadness and pity for his father clogged Danny's throat. He had only briefly experienced the pain of loosing his friends and family after the Nasty Burger incident—and he'd seen what that pain had turned him into—but his dad's loss had been _permanent_. And still, Jack Fenton was a jovial, if somewhat scatterbrained, man.

Danny couldn't imagine how.

"The government had to get involved. They cleaned the entire thing up, almost as though it had never happened. Amity Park was rebuilt and marketed to new settlers as a 'Safe Place to Live'. Your father, unable to deal with everything, left the state and enrolled in college in Wisconsin."

"So that's why he hates ghosts so much!" Jazz cried. "He blames ghosts for the loss of his parents and friends!"

Maddie nodded. "And that's why your father fights ghosts so passionately. I admit, my major in college was parapsychology, though the study of ghosts specifically has always interested me. After I met your father, and he told me what he'd suffered… It just cemented my desire to hunt down those parasitic subversions of post-human consciousness and ectoplasmic residue." Her voice had turned dark and Danny shivered, leaning away from that tone and the hate it carried.

How could he ever tell his parents his secret now? They had _very_ good reason to hate all ghosts; why would he be any different?

'_But they accepted me__ during that time with the reality gauntlet…'_

'_**You only saw their very initial reaction. After you'd**__** literally saved their lives. How do you know that gratitude would have lasted?'**_

"So… how… why did you and Dad come back here. And why is Dad so…" Jazz stumbled over her words and shifted restlessly in the armchair. "I mean, I never would've guess that Dad lost… in such a way…"

"Yes, your father has amazing resilience, doesn't he?" Maddie's said affectionately. "He has a simple mind, but a good heart. However, I think the loss did affect him. It did change him, in ways that we may not even be aware of. And he was the one who suggested coming to live in Amity Park. Maybe it gives him a connection to his parents."

Danny turned his head away, passing his fingers over his nose and cheek.

'_When I lost everyone, I turned my pain into __a well of rage. Dad turned his into gratitude for the things he __**does**__ have. Sure, he's completely obsessed with tearing ghosts apart 'molecule-by-molecule', but about everything else he's pretty easy-going. Excitable though. Easy to anger, but calms down just as fast.'_ This thought, while it did hugely improve Danny's view on his dad, still made him feel like dirt.

"Hey mom, does Dad still have the stone that his mother gave him?" Jazz's words pierced Danny's depressing thoughts and he focused on the answer, also interested in what he mother would say.

Maddie's brows pulled together. "No… and that's the strange thing. A couple of years after college, I asked him about the stone but he just gave me a confused look and asked me what I was talking about. I was never able to figure out what happened."

Danny mirrored his mother's frown. Elbows on his folded legs, he entwined his hands, then rested his chin on them. What his mother was saying definitely was suspicious and it stank of ghostly interference. But no ghost Danny had ever come across could alter memories.

And yet, the word 'college' jumped out at him. Danny couldn't help it: whenever one of his parents mentioned something odd or strange going on around their college years the young hybrid's mind always angled straight to Vlad. A couple of years after college would have given Vlad plenty of time to get comfortable enough with his powers to go and steal his grandmother's memento.

'_But not even Vlad's that heartless. Besides, how could he have changed Dad's memories? Better yet, why would he have even wanted the stone in the first place?'_

Of course, it might just be a single move in another one of Vlad's confused, tangled plotlines. Maybe he did it just for kicks, or a private laugh. The man wanted to _kill _Jack for goodness sake. Nothing was beneath him, evidently.

Danny's lips pressed together.

"So all this happened in Amity Park and _no one_ talks about it? How is that even possible?" Jazz piped up once more. She wasn't letting up with the questions and for that Danny was grateful: it gave him time to think without missing out on any important information.

"Well, let's just say there's a reason why your father and I distrust the government." Maddie said wryly. "They are very good at burying things they don't want to be found out. They recorded the incident that levelled Amity Park as 'The Night of Abaddon'—"

"Abaddon…" Jazz mused. " '_Place of destruction_,' " she frowned. "Very appropriate."

"It was," Maddie agreed. "Then they proceeded to pay your father off to promise to never tell this story to anyone."

"That's, that's—!" Jazz gaped, unable to express her indignation. Danny had no such problem.

"That's evil." He said, not a hint of humour in his voice.

"And that's why you can't tell even Sam and Tucker about this. It's a very dangerous secret." Maddie looked at Danny seriously, who straightened in his seat. "Which is why it is also very strange for you to have simply 'heard' the term 'Night of Abaddon'. Danny, almost no living person knows that Amity Park was once destroyed. We've taught you how to recognize ghosts. So tell me: was it a ghost you heard it from? And did you really just come across it on the street?" She sent him a piercing stare and he wondered, as he always did, if it was simply a 'Mom thing' to be able to tell when a kid was not telling the whole truth.

Danny's head tipped. "No…" he mumbled, avoiding eye contact. "It wasn't on the street. It was the museum. Remember the ghost I saw in Natural History museum last month? It's because of it that I heard about the 'Night of Abaddon'." It took some fancy wording, but it wasn't a lie. Not exactly. He could tell Jazz was giving him a weird look from across the room though.

"Danny! You should have told us sooner! Did that ghost say anything else? Are you absolutely sure that ghost didn't hurt you?" Her gaze drifted to the bruise on his cheek and she blinked, an odd expression crossing her face.

"Yes to the second and no to the first… more or less. I can't remember exactly what the ghost said. I'm fine, Mom." Noticing her attention to his face, he tilted his chin away in an attempt to hide the bruise. It was healing: several times faster than it should have been. The last thing he wanted was his mother commenting on that fact.

"That's twice now that a ghost has attacked you and I haven't been able to help." She said regretfully and Danny instantly knew what she was thinking.

"No, Mom, I'm sure the ghost didn't attack me to get to you." He assured, "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the museum and in the lab. It doesn't help that I'm _really_ clumsy." He said with a lopsided grin.

Maddie didn't bother restraining the urge: she leaned across the couch and gathered her son in a hug. A startled look crossed Danny's face at first, but that quickly melted into an awkward smile as he returned the embrace. Jazz meanwhile, shook her head with a smile and decided it was probably a good time for her to make a quiet exit. Her brother was a sap, but very much less inclined to engage in said sappy behaviour if he had an audience. And so, she rose and slipped out of the room. As she made her way of the stairs a thought struck her and she turned back with a somewhat evil grin. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her cell phone and snapped a quick picture.

Jazz giggled mischievously all the way to her room.

Back in the family room, Maddie and Danny were still discussing his recent ghost encounters. "It's good that, for the lab at least, Vlad was there to help." She said.

The instant she mentioned Vlad's name, Danny had tensed and all levity vanished from his expression.

"I know you don't like him." Maddie stated frankly, "but your father thinks the world of Vlad. So we have to be civil, right?"

Danny looked surprised when she included herself in that statement. "I thought you liked him since he…_saved_ me and all." He seemed to have to force the words through his teeth.

"I believe he's a good man, deep down." Maddie clarified. "But Vlad Masters could infuriate even a priest."

"And he's creepy." Danny added with a dry grin.

"And he's creepy." She repeated, her answering smile identical to his.

They spent a moment in silence then. Danny's eyes were far away and Maddie was tempted to ask what he was thinking about. She refrained. Instead, she simply watched her son. She marvelled at how fast he was growing up. Wasn't it just last year that he'd been in Junior High: worrying about going to Jazz's school with 'teenagers', realizing girls made him giggle and battling the horrors of puberty and acne? Back then he'd always needing her advice before doing things, and her nagging to do his chores and homework.

Now things were different. He was getting older and it seemed like a whole new set of problems were arising. He appeared more comfortable with himself, and more serious. She still had to nag him to do his chores and homework but those conversations would often result in loud arguments. He had become secretive, and guarded his privacy jealously. These days Maddie barely had any idea what her son did from morning until he returned home.

And Jazz said he was being bullied.

Danny said he'd walked into a wall. But unless he'd run flat out into the wall while looking somewhere off to his left, there was no way he could have given himself that bruise.

Which meant someone had hit him. Someone had struck _her son._

Maybe Danny wouldn't talk to her, but she'd be damned if she let him get hurt again.

Danny sighed then, and Maddie's attention was drawn back to him as he unfolded his legs and stood. "I… I'm getting a little tired now. I think I should just go work on some homework and then go to sleep… It's… a lot to think about all at once. Thanks for telling us, Mom." He glanced behind himself, as though expecting to see Jazz there on the armchair and blinked when he saw the chair was empty. Maddie herself had noticed when her daughter had made her exit—and took that picture, she remembered with an amused shake of the head.

Danny bid his mother a good night but only got as far as the foot of the staircase before he paused and turned around.

"Hey Mom?" He asked, fixing ice-blue eyes on her.

"Yes, Danny?" She nodded from the couch.

"You said that when Grandma Fenton acted as a spirit medium it put a strain on her and caused seizures… How come?" Danny's gaze was extraordinarily keen as he focused singularly on his mother. "Why is it so dangerous to put a ghost to rest?"

Maddie hesitated before answering. "It has not been studied..." She said slowly, unwilling to continue speculating on a tangent so far removed from proven fact.

"Can you guess? Or hypothesize something?" There was something in Danny's expression, some buried distress that struck her hard enough to change her mind.

"I believe that it is due to the nature of the act." She told her son honestly. "We are living creatures. Every day, we fight to sustain this life, to guard it and preserve it jealously. Death is a vast unknown and we deify it; it clashes with the very essence of human life and vigour. Do you understand? But in order to put a ghost to rest, the spirit medium must establish a connection, a pathway, between this plane of existence and whatever it is that lies beyond. The medium is acting as a facilitator for the ghost's passage and to do that, the medium must have a foot planted firmly in each world: that of the living and that of the dead.

This dual existence contradicts the very core of our nature. It is more than a physical or mental strain. Every second that the medium spends in this limbo causes grief to the soul: which, while being drawn to death, is still chained to the living body. Can you imagine the struggle? Tempted by eternal rest from difficulties and strife—how much strength it would take to return to this world, where every day brings new struggles?"

Maddie fell silent at this point. She looked like she could keep on talking—theorizing on this fuzzy but fascinating unexplored branch of paranormal philosophy—but she could sense that Danny was starting to be confused.

Indeed, although Danny was trying his best to follow his mother, he still felt like his head was starting to spin. This was of thinking was completely new to him and he didn't know what to make of it—much less how it applied to him as a human-ghost hybrid who just happened to have put a ghost to rest the other day.

Just how closely did he court death? Was it a distant shadow that he brushed against every time he turned ghost—or was it closer, did he actually hop back and forth across that line?

He barely managed to mumble a distant goodnight to his mother as he made his way upstairs, more than ready to throw himself into the shower and attempt to wash these weird thoughts out of his head.

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Danny met Jazz before the door leading to the lab many hours after their parents had gone to sleep.

"Did you get any sleep?" His sister asked, looking at the smudges under his eyes in concern.

"Couple hours." Danny suppressed a yawn. "I didn't expect the talk with mom to take so long."

"Yeah," she agreed. "I'd never even thought about it before. I mean, I knew Dad's parents were… had passed… but I never really asked how or why."

"Me neither."

"So," Jazz sent him a sidelong look. "Do have a plan to get into the museum?"

"Er… no." He looked sheepish. "I was hoping you could help with that part."

She heaved an exaggerated sigh, then sent him a sly grin. "You are _so _lucky you have me for a sister."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay fine. I bow to your ego, which is ten times more inflated than mine could ever be. Now, what's this brilliant plan of yours, oh amazing one?"

Jazz huffed, crossing her arms. "Just for that I might not tell you."

"Ja-aazz…" Danny practically whined. "Don't start that one."

"Fine, fine. Just trying to lighten the mood. Here, I snuck this out of the lab after diner." From behind her back, Jazz pulled out an object that looked very much like a screw jack to Danny.

He squinted one eye at the metal object, as though trying to glean secrets from its serrated edges, then looked at Jazz. "_This_ is your plan? It's a car jack, Jazz." Skepticism dripped from his words.

"Ah, but it's a car jack with the word 'Fenton' on it." Jazz held up a finger knowingly as she coined one of their parents' favourite phrases. "It can lift up any ghostly object. Dad calls it the Fenton Jack."

Danny's eyelids fell half-mast. "You're kidding."

"Nope." Jazz grinned. "But regardless of the ridiculous name, the idea's not bad. Dad said they made it to widen an opening in the ghost-human shield around the museum."

"Umm… Aren't you forgetting one small detail? In order to widen an opening in the shield don't we first need a _opening?_" He exclaimed, throwing his arms wide to emphasize his point.

She slanted a look on him. "Yes, well, I was hoping _you_ could help with that part, since I seem to be coming up with all the ideas so far."

Danny was about to retort with something sarcastic when he was unexpectedly struck with an idea. Brushing passed his sister, Danny walked straight through the door to the lab. With a flick of his wrist, he turned on the lights and loped down the stairs two at a time.

His sister called after him, unable to follow after him through the locked door. It had become a rule after the accident when Danny and his friends had snuck into the lab afterhours, he'd gotten curious, pressed a very inconveniently placed button and woken up the entire household with his screams. Now his parents had made it official: no one was allowed in the lab after Jack and Maddie went to bed.

Danny had joked to his sister once that their parents simply didn't want the kids making any more scientific breakthroughs without them present. Suffice it to say that Jazz hadn't found the joke very funny.

So the door to the basement was locked everyday at 11pm, the key kept safe in Maddie's possession.

Of course, locked doors had started to become a lot less meaningful to Danny once he gained the power to simply walk through them.

Rummaging around on the shelves on the wall adjacent to the ghost portal, Danny pulled down a spare Fenton thermos. After checking to make sure it functioned properly, he strapped it over his shoulder, settling the weight of the thermos across his back.

Reaching into his pocket he grasped the spherical object he found there and then his eyes hardened. A ring of white energy snapped into being around his waist. It split, spinning outward in opposite directions; cold numbness washed over him and then he was ghost. Before his eyes, the colour bleached out of his hair, silver gloves wrapped around his hands and his feet slipped off the ground, no longer feeling the pull of gravity.

He was about to zip back up the stairs to rejoin his sister when he spotted a single utility belt hanging from a hook on the wall.

It was the same belt his mother had been wearing when they'd been stranded in the Colorado.

"Hm… This could be useful." Reaching out, he pulled the belt off the hook. A quick inspection showed that there were half a dozen different devices hidden in the thing: a standard ecto-gun, the Fenton Fisher, the Jack-O'-Nine-Tails and a couple of other little gadgets he'd never seen before.

Danny grinned at the mass of silver and green weapons in his hands. It was pretty cool. _'You never know when one of these could come in handy.'_ Rather proud of himself for thinking ahead, Danny snapped the belt around his hips.

In spite of it belonging to his mother, the belt still fit relatively well. Patting it down, Danny's fingers found a small pouch on his left side, which he quickly zipped open.

Opening his clenched fist, Danny spared a few brief seconds to stare into the shimmering depths of the gem that sat in his palm. Then he tipped his hand, rolling the Lunch Lady's memento gently into the pocket.

Wasting no more time in the lab, Danny exerted a bit of willpower to turn himself intangible, then jumped up through the ceiling.

"Hey!" Jazz jumped as she saw him come through the ground near her feet. "Where've you be—eeeeahh!"

Danny didn't bother answering his sister as he swept her up in his arms and flew through the ceiling, heading in the direction of the Amity Park Museum of Natural History.

'_Sam, Tucker, hold on. I'm coming for you guys.'_

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_End Chapter 22_

_To Be Continued…_

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Done for now! OOooo, next chapter is where it starts to get juicy! I can't wait!

Thank you **smallvillephantom14, starsinjars, Princess of Rose, Curious Nightmare, Yugisrose **and **VampirefrootloopsRule **(for your awesome PM :D)

Please drop a line telling me what you think of the story thus far. Else, I'm not sure if you're liking it, loving it, hating it, or are somewhat moderately indifferent to it ^_^

**Adio!**


	23. Breaking and Entering

**Hiya!**

Argh! School. Is. Too. Much. Work! Argharghargh…*headdesk*

**Disclaimer:** YES! I got them! I got the ownership papers for Danny—(papers spontaneously implode due to practical improbability) (The Ghost Writer appears yelling about the responsibility of an author, not abusing one's powers and something about reaping consequences before popping out). I don't know what he was on about,/was there really such a need to shout?/Oh no, I seem to be speaking in prose/Please hurry to the chapter and end my woes.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 23**__** — **__Breaking and Entering_

"Okay, so what's this big plan of yours?" Jazz crossed her arms and looked up at the ethereal form of her brother. The siblings stood—or, in Danny's case, floated—before Amity Park's Museum of Natural history, a few feet away from the phosphorescent bubble that surrounded it, keeping out both humans and ghosts alike. The ghost-human shield curved sharply up from the ground in a towering arc that peaked several stories in the air; and it glowed so intensely that, in spite of the late hour, the nearby trees, grass and sky were alight in toxic green.

Jazz herself was haloed by nephrite, a look that greatly resembled Danny's own hazy glow.

She watched as he fiddled with the belt around his waist, immediately recognizing it as their mother's. Before she could ask him what he was doing with it, Danny spoke up.

"Remember I told you how that stone I found in the Ghost Zone amplifies my power?" He asked.

Jazz nodded. "Yeah."

"Well…" Slipping a hand into one of the pouches, he drew the stone out. Caught between his thumb and index finger, the gem shone like a fallen star.

Jazz stared. Her eyes tracked the stone until Danny closed his fist around it. "Is that why you took Mom's utility belt?" She wondered, raising an eyebrow.

The hybrid shrugged. "Sorta. My ghost form doesn't have any pockets and it was easier to stash it in the belt while I was carrying you."

"So then, when you're… human," It was distinctly disconcerting to describe her brother's strange state as something not entirely human and Jazz stumbled over the word, "and you put stuff in your pockets then what happens to it when you turn ghost?" She wanted to know.

Danny just stared at her like she'd grown an additional head.

"You do know how random you sounded just then, right?"

"Hey!" She cried indignantly. "It's a valid question!" But Danny was already turning away, studying the crystal in his hand and the ghost shield. He had a little smirk on his face though, which was how Jazz knew he was purposely ignoring her question.

'_Boys.'_

Danny raised a finger and pointed it at the museum. Jazz watched in muted fascination as her brother's finger lit with unearthly energy that was then directed toward the dome. The energy did not reflect back, instead it was absorbed into the shield, a fact that seemed to interest Danny, who leaned forward with an intrigued 'hmm'.

Jazz, however, was still thinking about how he'd fired off that ghost beam with such ease. Once, she'd asked him how exactly he manifested his powers: the whole idea of a ghostly super-powered teen had completely blown her mind. Danny however, had responded with an infuriating 'I just do it' or 'I just concentrate and make it happen.'

It was so frustrating that her brother got all these amazing powers and didn't even bother to figure out how they worked!

"Okay Jazz, I got it." Pulled out of her thoughts, Jazz looked up at the determined look on Danny's face. "When you touch the shield you feel just a hard surface right?" She nodded. He neared the shield and barely grazed his fingertips over it. There was a loud crackle and Jazz jumped, eyes widening at the sparks that leapt up to meet his hand. Danny simply grimaced.

"I feel a little shock," He said. That was little? Jazz wondered. Danny, oblivious to her thoughts, continued, "Which probably means it reacts to my energy and I might be able to break through it if I hit it hard enough. I want to get this right on the first try though. And I can't tire myself out before even getting into the museum." He paused for a second of thought. "If I fire an ectoblast through _this_." He held up the crystal between his thumb and index finger. "Then I should be able to blast a hole widen enough for you to use the… Fenton Jack." Jazz nearly giggled at the pained look on her brother's face as he forced out the name of their father's invention.

"Right. Got it." She nodded, though secretly she wondered if he was just pulling this theory out of thin air. It followed logic by only the slimmest margin—still, his idea was the only one they had at the moment. And they didn't exactly have the luxury of time on their side.

'_It's already been… God, has it only been two days since Sam and Tucker were taken? Still… two days are two days too long…'_

Jazz then watched as Danny held up the crystal in the palm of his hand. She about to point out how dangerous it would be hold the gem and shoot a beam through it at the same time; but then Danny slipped his hand out from under the stone and she gasped as it remained floating in the air, suspended on nothing.

'_Is Danny doing that?'_ She wondered in awe. A glance at her brother confirmed that he didn't seem very surprised that the stone was now floating four feet off the ground.

Danny sent her a look.

"Ready?"

She held up the jack. "Ready."

But when Danny threw up his hands and sent a thick beam of green energy at the stone, Jazz was in no way prepared for ground shaking blast that shot out the other end.

The stone acted like a bullhorn would with sound, and the energy that Danny funnelled into it was amplified many, many times over, before shooting out in a blinding flash of white light.

Jazz cried out, instinctively crouching into a ball and shielded her eyes as the beam—impossibly bright and about the width of a school bus—struck the ghost-human shield with a resounding boom.

"JAZZ!" She heard Danny bellow over the screeching energy. "Do it! Do it NOW; I can't hold this!"

Throwing herself to her feet, Jazz forced her eyes open in time to see Danny's ectoblast fade away. He wobbled a bit, but Jazz didn't have time to worry about that as the hole he'd punched in the ghost shield was rapidly closing.

Leaping at the shield, Jazz thanked the stars that the Danny had aimed low enough that the rift opened onto the Earth. She slammed the gadget onto the soil and then jacked up the metal bar as far as it would go.

The rift shrank and the shield pushed down on Fenton Jack but, showing once more that their parents truly did know what they were doing, the jack somehow kept managed to maintain an opening just high and wide enough for someone to crawl through. Jazz grinned at their success and then turned back to her brother, who was holding his head with a somewhat dazed look on his face.

"You okay?" She asked.

"Yeah. Woo… head rush." His eyes came back into focus and he grinned at Jazz. "You got it to stay open! Awesome! So, you know the plan right?"

Jazz shifted. "I don't know, Danny. I really should come with you…"

Danny's expression turned from airy to serious in an instant. "No, Jazz. We already talked about that. If you come then I'll just be worrying; I won't be able to fight properly."

"I'll be there only to back you up. It's silly to think you can handle everything all by yourself all the time. Danny, I saw this ghost, it's _huge_. I've helped you in the past before, haven't I?—And don't you dare bring up the thermos incident because you _know_ I've improved my aim."

"It's not about that," Danny countered, running an agitated hand through his hair. "Look, I'm not saying you can't help. I'm just saying that there's a… a _limit _to how much you _can_ help." Danny winced even as he said these words, as though preparing himself for an indignant outburst.

Jazz though, couldn't find the will to get angry at her brother: much as his words irritated her pride, she understood what he was saying. Instead, she switched tactics.

"Still, I could help getting Sam and Tucker out while you distract the ghost."

"Jazz, from what you told me, the ghost is probably keeping them under the museum. How am I supposed to fly down there, find Sam and Tucker and then fly all three of you out while simultaneously fighting off whatever is bound to be chasing us?"

Jazz stalled. He had a good point.

"Besides, I need you to make sure the way out stays open." Danny pounded in the final nail, pointing a gloved finger at the modified car jack. "What if someone comes by and gets curious?" He spread his arms—shrugged.

Jazz pursed her lips and didn't reply. With brotherly ease, Danny read the expression and flashed a triumphant grin—which he quickly smothered when she shot him a glare.

"So now that you're on stake-out duty, do you have any—" Danny abruptly cut himself off with a loud gasp and Jazz frowned, starting towards him. An odd look crossed his face, but before she could ask anything, she blinked and Danny had disappeared.

"Danny?" She called in shock.

"Yeah?"

She spun around and there he was: a vaguely troubled furrow in his brow as he stuffed something into the pockets of his utility belt.

"What was that? You just disappeared and reappeared over there. You can't do that… Can you?" With Danny, one couldn't rule anything out. Maybe he simply turned in visible and flew over really quickly?

"Huh? What do you mean?" Danny sent her a quizzical look but, abruptly, realization dawned on his face. "Oh! No, it's nothing I just turned invisible." He shrugged and couldn't meet her eyes, a sure sign that he was lying. She bit back on her instinct to nag an answer out of him; instead, she sucked on her tongue in displeasure.

"Don't gimme that look." Danny sulked; lacking pockets into which he could shove his hands, he settled for crossed arms as he scuffed his foot on air. Jazz simply raised an eyebrow, which made him visibly grimace.

"Oh you're giving me the _eyebrow_ now?" He raised his hands in surrender. "Look, I… It's nothi—Okay, so it wasn't really nothing. But I-I'll tell you about it later. Right now I kinda have a big creepy museum to ransack before sunrise. We can talk more later, 'kay?" He didn't even seem to be aware of his rambling. "Just, before I go in, take this." Patting down the utility belt, Danny found what he was looking for in one of the front pockets. Reaching in, he pulled out a short stick and tossed it to Jazz. She caught it, rather ungracefully, but managed not to drop the Jack-O'-Ninetails.

"You won't need this?" She inquired.

He gave a non-committal tilt of his head and shoulders. "Eh. I never use the thing. But I know it's one of your favourites." She pinked and he sent her a lopsided grin. Swooping down, he landed before the glowing dome and paused. Jazz saw his hands clench and frame stiffen as he drew in a deep breath.

"So you're really going in this alone?" She asked again. She really did hate being left behind every time.

"Sorry Jazz," Were the only words he offered. He got down on his belly, using his knees and forearms to worm his way through the hole held open by the Fenton Jack. He stood up on the other side and flashed her a wide grin through the swirling green of the ghost-human-shield. "I know what I'm doing; I fight ghosts all the time. This one's no different. Besides, I gotta save Sam and Tucker and maybe give a little payback of my own." He added, raising a glowing fist.

But if it was his intention to act cocky he was failing miserably. His grin was forced and his eyes were too wide.

Rather than point this out, Jazz said instead, "If anything goes wrong _call _me and I'll get Mom and Dad. I don't care if you want to keep your secret. You won't have a secret to keep if you're full ghost."

Danny gave her an appeasing smile and snapped off an exaggerated salute before turning and jumping into the air.

Then he was gone and all Jazz could do was wait. Wait and worry.

'_Experience or not, Danny's just a kid. What sort of a sister sends her kid brother off to God knows what kind of danger?'_

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There was a twitch in Danny's right eye that refused to go away no matter how much he squinted.

Passing intangibly through the front doors of the museum, Danny touched down in the centre of the main hall.

The skeleton of some large dinosaur leered creepily with its eyeless sockets and brown teeth. The central help desk was lit, but devoid of life. No guards, no movement no sound in the vast, eerie room. Taking a few steps forward, his shoes caused a pattering echo. It was dark, but the dim glow of backup and security lights were enough that Danny didn't have to conjure a ghostly torch. He was glad for this. He had a feeling he'd need to conserve all his energy for what he was about to do.

'_Going to do… Still have so much to get done…'_ The task seemed monstrously colossal as it loomed over him._ 'Find Sam… find Tucker… don't get eaten…' _

Then, he shook his head.

'_Wow, haven't even started the fight and already I'm psyching myself out.'_ Danny laughed off his nerves, doing a little jig to work the stiffness out of his arms and legs. _'Pull yourself together Fenton. You gotta save Sam and Tucker.'_

Fingers going to one of the pouches on his mother's utility belt, Danny stroked the outline of Clockwork's medallion through the material. The Time Master had appeared to Danny right before he'd entered the museum. Jazz had seen Danny disappear from one spot only to instantly reappear in another—disappearing from the time stream tended to do that—but she hadn't guessed the truth. Oh she was suspicious, but what was new there?

Jazz still did not know that the creature they were facing was no ghost and that it had been the very same monster that had razed Amity Park over twenty years ago. And Danny had no intention of enlightening her to either point. Besides, it wasn't like he was jumping in completely alone; Clockwork had given him a way to call for help:

"_So this is your choice?" Clockwork had asked Da__nny once he'd unfrozen the hybrid from the halted time stream._

_It had taken Danny a moment to realize time had just stopped, and another moment to understand the question, but when he did he nodded decisively. "I won't let Legion get this stone. So I'm going to save Sam and Tucker." His eyes strayed to his sister: frozen with a frown on her face and one hand outstretched._

_Clockwork considered him for a moment before pulling out a time medallion from his cloak._

"_Take this." The elder ghost had said. "My power, like that of all ghosts, is muted by the influence of Legion. However, if you call me with this I will be able to come to you. Only use it in time of desperate need."_

_Danny had taken the medallion gratefully. "Will I succeed?" He couldn't help but ask._

"_That, my young charge, is something only you can answer."_

Clockwork hadn't yielded any further explanations. The ghost merely raised his staff, disappearing back into the Ghost Zone before unfreezing time, leaving Danny to deal with his bemused sister.

She had looked worried. Worried and upset—probably because she'd known he was lying to her. Jazz always knew when Danny was lying. It was irritating.

Having run out of memory to reminisce without feeling like he was unnecessarily stalling the inevitable, Danny came back to the present. He took to the air and sped off through a shadowy archway, heading in toward the cursed room where he'd first met the Hound.

The cavernous halls of the museum were maze-like and endless. Dozens of exhibits flashed by: rooms of glittering gems, glass walls caging beasts with beady eyes and bared teeth. The bestial statues and open sarcophagi of the Egyptian exhibit were especially eerie in the dead silence and dim lighting. Danny flew quickly. He had a strong impression that the shadows were moving with him, and that he'd heard the mummy take a dusty breath. But he stifled these fears, forced his eyes forward, and flew even faster.

Despite having been there only once, Danny found the anthropology exhibit with relative ease. It was like a hand on his mind had guided him there.

Ropes and yellow police tape barred the entrance. Danny barely even spared them a glance as he flew into the room, intangible.

The moment he hit the threshold, Danny fell instantly out of the air, landing on his hands and knees as he coughed harshly. The very air suffocated him. An unnatural cold permeated the place with a frigid chill that made goosebumps rise on his arms even though he was still in ghost mode. He held his hands over his lower face, drawing in a breath through his mouth. He gagged, but forced the breath down and after that first inhale the rest were easier. He stood.

The room was just as he remembered: giant windows that ran wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, were covered with heavy curtains, granite pedestals were overturned, broken into pieces that littered the ground. A crude tapestry hung across one wall, depicting a morbid ritual. Pale moonlight slanted in through the gaps in the curtains, bathing the destruction in an ethereal glow.

Yet the room was completely empty. No Sam, no Tucker, not even the whisper of wind that had preceded the Hound.

Nothing.

Danny landed on a spot of tiled floor that wasn't covered in rubble and looked around.

Why was it so quiet? Where was the Hound, the epic fight? The muscles in Danny's back stiffened as his hands clenched into trembling fists.

No wind. No sound. Save for a lingering chill and a feeling of deep paranoia, the room was perfectly normal.

Danny clenched his teeth, stared around himself with simmering eyes. He was tempted to shout out his presence to the air, but at the very last moment his throat constricted, seizing his voice before it could pass his lips.

A thrill of fear cinched his heart. He didn't want Legion to find him. He didn't want to fight that monster again.

'_**There. Go there.'**_

Danny's eyes were drawn to a spot of dark metal—iron or pewter—on the ground near the other end of the room. Floating over, he landed on one knee near the thing. It was circular and bulged outward, with strange writing around which were seven spherical depressions.

On a whim, Danny took out his phone and snapped a picture of the lid. He'd watched enough mystery movies to know that cryptic, fancy writing was _always _important.

'_**Through it… Through it…'**_

Danny followed the thought: leaning over and putting his head straight through the metal lid.

Opening his eyes on the other side, Danny was met with utter black and the musty smell of old paper and dust. Steeling his nerves, Danny phased himself completely through the lid.

It was like being dropped into a giant ink jar. His ghostly aura allowed him to see his own fingertips but nothing beyond that. Blinking, he floated awkwardly in the vain hope that his eyes would adjust. The utter pitch black seemed to press in on him—suffocating him.

'_I wonder if Mom packed a flashlight in here?'_ He rummaged through the utility belt strapped to his hips. Eventually he hit paydirt in the form of a slim headlamp. Mentally thanking his mother's foresight, he wasted no time in pulling the strap around his head and switching the light on.

A circle of yellow was illuminated before him and he realized he was floating among the rafters, nose centimetres away from a long plank of wood.

Descending, his hands were raised defensively as he twisted his head around. Amongst the shadows, he could make out many thick pillars of stone. Far below was a brown, plain-looking floor.

Strewn all over and stacked in chaotic order were innumerable boxes, crates, draped objects. Wrapped paintings leaned against pedestals crowned by gold vases. Mannequins, both naked and clothed, were piled up: random limbs sticking out bizarrely. All of it reminded Danny of a prop house in a theatre—except many times larger, and many times creepier.

Also—Danny's eyes caught on the tusked skull of some large animal that leered at him through empty eye sockets—these weren't props.

He swallowed.

Picking a direction, he flew forward and eventually found himself at a wall of sloped concrete. Looking down, he saw that the wall opened up into a cavernous hallway. Swooping down, he floated through the archway and into the much narrower corridor.

The ceiling was high, but the walls closed in around Danny. There was a distant echoing of water dripping somewhere and the smell of dusty mould was thick in the air. 'Dusty' was an understatement; Danny could see the motes drifting so densely that he had to resist the urge to cover his nose when he inhaled. To his left and right he could see more arching gateways set into the walls. Some of these were bricked up, but others opened up into more rooms, all filled with more random objects from old museum exhibits. Sometimes he caught sight of the labels on the crates—_CHIROPTERA,_ _MONOCOTYLEDON, PACHYDERMATA_.

'_What __**is **__this place?'_ He wondered as he passed a room of murky, fluid-filled jars. _'A glorified grave for old museum stuff?'_

As he flew, he drifted gradually downward until he was gliding only a few feet off the ground. Staying close to a hard surface calmed him somewhat. The light from headlamp only illuminated a very thin area of the room, everything else remained pitch black.

Eventually he came to a fork in the hall: the right path lead to a single room stuffed with enough boxes to make the Box Ghost weep with joy while the left was a continuation of the hall. Danny went left.

The next time the path split, his choice was not so easy: both forks led down into a hazy gloom impenetrable by his light. Something was telling him to take the left path again though, so he listened.

Again and again, like a maze, the hall split and turned off into different direction. Danny yielded to instinct. _Left, left, right, middle, second from the right… _He eventually stopped even trying to remember the path. After he found Sam and Tucker he could just fly them through the ceiling, anyway.

'_**Left… go left. Now right. No, don't turn here…'**_ It was so quiet he could even hear the buzzing of the headlamp on his forehead.

_Plick_

_Plick_

The sound of dripping water was getting louder, and the hair on his neck stood up with anticipation.

'_Does it know I'm here?'_

A low moan made Danny jerk in the air and instinctively turn himself invisible. He listened carefully.

_Uuhnng… _

_**Uuhnn**__**g**__…_

The guttural sounds were getting louder and Danny had no intention of being around when whatever-it-was showed up. In an instant he had turned and fled down the hallway.

_**Uuhnn**__**g!**_

Forgoing caution for speed, Danny tore around the bends of the halls, a rift of dust rising in his wake. _Something_ was following him. In his mind's eye, Danny saw a flash of yellow, clawed hands reaching for him and poured on even more speed.

_**Uhng!**_

A shadow fell over him and Danny veered to the right, turning intangible just in time to phase through a wall. He ended up in an entirely different room and halted. Invisible, he stifled his erratic breathing with one hand over his mouth as he forced his back against the wall, nearly melding into it. He took a deep breath, held it. And listened.

…Nothing.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Danny looked around himself for the first time.

The dripping was loudest here. Directing his light upward, he saw that the ceiling was not that high, and it was lined in rusty pipes. One pipe had cracked and was leaking steadily onto the floor. A layer of dampness coated everything. Looking closer at the pipes, Danny saw that they extended over the wall, curling downward. He followed one of the larger pipes then froze when the green light glinted off something metallic.

Chains. Metal bindings that lead down to two pairs of wrists. Danny's breath caught as he followed those wrists down to two familiar faces.

"Sam! Tucker!" He couldn't help his cry of joy as he swopped down to his best friends. His feet landed with an odd, echoing splash in the shallow water and he placed his hands on the cheeks of his friends. "C'mon guys, wake up." He pleaded. But Sam and Tucker were cold as stone and unresponsive. In a fit of panic, Danny's hand flew to Sam's neck, shaking badly as he search for a pulse. He nearly sagged as he found it: strong and stable. Switching to Tucker, he sighed in relief at the pulsing beat he felt under his fingers.

"Now to get you out." He told them; and with a flicker of energy, he'd phased his friends out of their restraints. They crumpled limply to the ground, but Danny seized their wrists—one in each hand—and prepared to fly them out.

"You came back."

Danny nearly jumped out of his skin at the unexpected voice. Spinning around, he had to let go of Sam and Tucker, who slumped, boneless, against the wall. Then he gasped when he came nearly nose-to-nose with a woman who looked very familiar. He looked over the woman's shoulder and saw her male partner.

"Y-you… you're that couple I saw the first time I came here." His heart was thumping in his chest, every instinct he had was telling him to grab Sam and Tucker and _leave_. But when the woman's hand came up to his face and stroked down one side, all thought fled him as he grimaced at the sensation.

Her hand had the consistency of water, yet it left the feeling of worms crawling across his skin in its wake.

"So alive…" The woman gaped at him and Danny stared at her in response.

"What are you?" He whispered. Not ghosts. They couldn't be, his sense hadn't gone off.

"We are the damned." Came the man's voice. And Danny suddenly realized that they were not alone. All around, more people were rising out of the water and shuffling toward him. Danny recoiled, reaching for Sam and Tucker, but another man—with a tall stature and bulk that towered over Danny's gangly form—grasped Danny by the upper arms and pushed him away.

Instantly, Danny went intangible, and there was a series of loud gasps as he slipped right through the man's fingers.

He saw that other figures were moving to surround Sam and Tucker. Some leaned over them, while others grasped their wrists, presumably to chain them up again. All Danny saw though was the way his friends' breathing suddenly became laboured as the not-ghosts' fingers brushed them.

"You leave them alone!" Danny cried and, still intangible, moved to walk through the man between him and his friends.

The instant his body came in contact with the man's though Danny was crying out in anguish and falling backwards clutching his head.

It was like thrusting his hand into a fire pit. He could not pass through these people. A blanket of agony had covered his mind and screams filled his ears until he thought he'd go deaf. There was physical pain, but it was compounded by the mental anguish that tore at his brain.

Completely disoriented, Danny failed to see the people converge on him. And it was only once he felt their hands on his face and arms that he looked up.

They were countless people, of all sizes, of all ethnicities, of all ages. And they poked and prodded him like he was some sort of fascinating creature. One dark man with hands like rawhide passed his hand over Danny's cheek and lips and the teen recoiled at the sent of rotting flesh, only to press up on a girl with platinum hair and eerie blue eyes that stared up at him beseechingly.

"So alive…" They whispered.

"Get away! What _are_ you!" Danny cried, trying to twist away from their grasp and failing. One thick hand passed over his neck and then tightened with incredible strength. Once again, Danny turned intangible, but ended up screaming as he fell through someone else, torment and pain wracking his mind. He fell to the ground and used this as an opportunity to scuttle back as far as possible. He broke through the crowd then immediately scrambled to his feet, holding his hands out in warning. They continued to shuffle toward him regardless.

"We are the damned, the souls of Legion. The doomed ones." Came his response.

"You too, are damned." Said the woman from before. "Join us in our torment." Fingers pulled at his hands in a mockery of the way a parent encourages a child to follow them and Danny yanked his hands away. Backing up, he froze when his shoulders struck a large, broad chest.

A hand clamped down on his right shoulder and stars exploded in Danny's vision as pain sparked down his shoulder.

"See? You bear the mark of Ahriman. You are already one of us."

Danny curled in on himself, holding down his seizing right hand with his left.

"No…"

"Come with us. We will make you immortal." Hands cupped his chin and raised his head to meet a pair of watery eyes that looked like they were drowning in anguish.

"NO!" Gathering his power around him, Danny let both ice and ghost energy explode out in all directions, blowing everyone and everything away.

Hands on his knees, Danny gasped for air. He didn't like attacking these people: their faces were so _human_. Yet Danny reminded himself that they weren't human, at least, not anymore. Simply glancing into their disturbed, insane eyes made that point very clear. These were tortured souls. They may have been innocent once but now they just existed to drag others into their special brand of hell.

Danny's hands clenched into his fists and he looked up, searching the room for Sam and Tucker. His headlamp had come off in the struggle and now lay dead and useless in the water. Fortunately, Danny's own white aura combined with the pale grey light surrounding the souls and the watery reflections on the walls were enough to see. His eyes softened in relief when he saw them propped up against a crate and he started in their direction.

"_You dare_." The hissing voice stopped him cold and he raised his eyes in dread to one of the many people slowly picking themselves up of the ground.

An involuntary cry escaped his lips when he saw one of their faces.

Eyeballs of the blackest coal stared at him through emaciated faces. Teeth, filed down to points, were stuffed into lipless mouths.

It was like he was once more seeing the evil doppelganger that haunted his dreams.

Except this was no dream.

One of the creatures leapt bodily at him and Danny yelled, crossing his arms in front of him. His power seemed to know what to do for him and a ghostly dome snapped into being around him. The monster ran headlong into the shield, scrapping at the dome and letting loose an inhuman screech. Another creature started beating on the shield and Danny threw his arms out, rapidly expanding the shield and pushing them back once more.

Danny took advantage of them being momentary stunned and belted towards Sam and Tucker. One of the creatures came flying at him but he managed to dodge and brought his leg out in a vicious roundhouse kick, catching the thing in the jaw and tossing it back. But in his distraction, he didn't see a set of claws descending towards him and screamed as they tore over the side of his neck and upper chest. Green ectoplasm oozed from the cuts, but Danny didn't have time to think about it as another monster tried to sink its teeth into his arm.

Picking the lesser of two evils, Danny turned himself intangible. Almost immediately, one of the vengeful spirits came leaping through him and he bit his lip at the awful sensation. Wasting no time, he flew to Sam and Tucker, scooped them up and flew through the wall.

A bloodcurdling screech followed their departure.

Danny continued flying through walls, passing what looked like discarded weapons and broken pottery, then through a room with what could have been models of animals. He hadn't bothered to use his powers to create a light, so he was only able to see the few inches before and around him that his ghostly aura illuminated.

Inarticulate cries of anger followed him at every turn. Sometimes he saw a flash of teeth or a glinting eye. He didn't know how the creatures were able to move so fast.

He swerved and yelled when he came face to face with a lipless, grinning visage. Danny couldn't stop; he went right through the creature with a pained cry and kept going.

Finally he arrived at the long hallway and that was when rational thought caught up to him.

'_Straight up,' _was Danny's revelation as he headed upward. Relief flooded him as he gained the advantage of altitude.

A triumphant squeal and the scraping of nails behind him made Danny's head snap around. The creature was scampering sideways _along the wall_. Danny's eyes widened and he was about to speed through the ceiling when a sudden chill made him double over in surprise.

He gasped. Then he coughed.

Incredulous green eyes stared at the blue smoke curling from his mouth.

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_End Chapter 23_

_To Be Continued…_

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Cliffhanger of DOOM! Hehehehe…

I didn't get around to replying to reviews by mail, so I'll add a few comments here:

**Phanfan925:** EEK! I love your penname! And oh, if you were screaming after that LAST chapter… hehehe

**smallvillephantom14:** I'm glad you enjoyed the last chapter. Danny's Grandmum being a spirit medium was a completely unplanned thing, to tell the truth XD That scene was supposed to have gone a lot different but I'm liking this better… _much better_ (evil grin). I hope you liked this chapter too! It's very Oktober-esque :3

**Princess of Rose:** Oh wow, thank you! I was a bit worried that the last chapter wasn't exciting enough or that it was too dialogue-heavy, so it's wonderful to hear that you liked it! As for how Jack can be so easygoing… well, as I see it there are two options: either he really IS that well-adjusted or… there's something more underneath that veneer of simpleness ;D

**Rogue Alice: **Thanks! And I hope you had lots of fun with this update :D

**A Spirit of the Stars:** Ohmygoodness! Your review was totally AWESOME! I LOVED reading your theories; although I am sorry I can't answer your questions; I'm itching to, but I can't—I'd spoil the story. But I can say that you are a very observant reader…SO, so awesome. I can't express just how much you made my day with this review :D And I hope you enjoyed this chapter (did you read it at night? :3)

**Master of Minds:** Hehehehehe, oh yes… INTENSE (evil grin).

As usual, you guys are all AWESOME. I hope everyone has a happy thanksgiving (or, if you're not celebrating, like me, then simply a happy weekend =P) and please, please, PLEASE review! I really want to hear all your opinions on this part of the story!

**Adio!**


	24. Infernal Waltz

**Yo!**

Have a very… _scary…_ Halloween… heh heh

I **Disclaim** it.

To everyone who reviewed: **Senside **(hehe, good instinct)**, dragondancer123, smallvillephantom14, aslan333, jamesbuffett, Light **(thanks!)**, Dark Sepia, kat **(:P) and **knAngel18**

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulcher**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 24 — **Infernal Waltz_

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_**Last time…**_

_Inarticulate cries of anger followed him at every turn. Sometimes he saw a flash of teeth or a glinting eye. He didn't know how the creatures were able to move so fast._

_He swerved and yelled when he came face to face with a lipless, grinning visage. Danny couldn't stop; he went right through the creature with a pained cry and kept going._

_Finally he arrived at the long hallway and that was when rational thought caught up to him._

'Straight up,_' was Danny's revelation as he headed upward. Relief flooded him as he gained the advantage of altitude. _

_A triumphant squeal and the scraping of nails behind him made Danny's head snap around. The creature was scampering_ sideways_ along the wall. Danny's eyes widened and he was about to speed through the ceiling when a sudden chill made him double over in surprise._

_He gasped. Then he coughed._

_Incredulous green eyes stared at the blue smoke curling_ from his mouth.

_**Now…**_

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'_A ghost? Here? I thought they all ran away to avoid Legion…'_

The creature scampering across the wall leaped at Danny, who yelped and dove out of the way to avoid the flailing claws, Sam and Tucker swinging like ragdolls from his hands.

He gasped again; and again his breath fogged blue.

'_Unless the ghost got caught. Then Legion might be sucking it dry right now…'_

More creatures were beginning to climb the walls. Like bugs they swarmed the place. More and more, they came until Danny could not count their numbers.

He had to make a decision _now_.

Like a bullet from a gun, Danny was off toward an area of the ground not crawling with monsters. He dropped Sam and Tucker gracelessly to the ground, mentally wincing and telling himself he'd make it up to them later, and reached into the belt pouch attached to his hip.

Some of the mad spirits had already changed course and were laughing gleefully as they loped towards Danny with alarming speed.

"CLOCKWORK!" He screamed, thrusting the medallion into the air and displaying the golden CW relief to the world.

An emaciated figure of gnarled limbs and pasty skin leapt at Danny's face. One clawed hand drew back to strike, lips split to reveal a triumphant cry.

And then time stopped.

Danny stood, frozen in shock as he goggled at the disfigured body before him. The hybrid's chest rose and fell dramatically. He panted as though he had just run a marathon, his mouth hung open and his eyes were wide.

Scant inches separated Danny from his pursuer. Frozen in mid air, the creature had stopped bare milliseconds away from disembowelling the teen. Danny could _see_ the saliva glistening on the monster's teeth. From this vantage point, he could see that there was absolutely nothing human-like about his pursuers: what human features they had where twisted and eroded by feral insanity.

Danny stumbled backward in the air and had to stifle a yelp when he bashed into another undead creature. Just then, a pair of purple clock hands spun into view, opening a blessedly familiar green portal. When Clockwork stepped out of the Ghost Zone, Danny's relief was great enough that he could have hugged the Time Master.

"Thank you, Clockwork." He gasped, putting a hand to his chest and grinning. "I know you like a timely entrance and everything; but next time, could you show up a few seconds faster? I'm gonna have a heart attack at this rate." Receiving nothing for his weak sarcasm except an insipid stare, Danny shook his head, straightened, and moved on. "Please, take them somewhere safe." He said, gesturing to Sam and Tucker.

Clockwork had appeared in the form of a child and gradually aged before Danny's eyes into a youth. "And yourself?" The ghost murmured blandly.

"There's a ghost here. I have to help them." At Clockwork's searching look, Danny clarified. "They might be my enemies, but that doesn't mean I'll let them get wasted. I have to do something!"

"Very well." Clockwork bent over his staff, tangled beard growing as he shrivelled with age. Reaching out with knobbly fingers, he lifted the CW medallion out of Danny's hands. "But know this, child: from here on in, you will face these trials alone. I cannot always come to your rescue."

Danny let out a puff of breath that blew up his bangs "Why not?" He whined.

Clockwork sent the teen a benign smile and did not answer. Sam and Tucker were abruptly encased in a sphere of glowing green ectoplasm and lifted into the air. Clockwork pointed his staff into the air.

Danny, realizing Clockwork's imminent departure, was suddenly much more preoccupied with mapping out an escape route among the hordes of frozen monsters.

"Beware the eyes of Legion, Phantom." Clockwork warned as ghost portal swirled into existence behind him. "They induce nightmarish hallucinations. They will tear your soul apart."

Danny knew. He knew all too well. Seeing Sam and Tucker safe in the hands of his trusted friend took a large weight off his mind, at least.

"Thank you!" He called.

"_TIME IN!_"

Screams and howls echoing in his ears, Danny didn't even wait to see if he was being followed, he just leapt into the air and took off through a wall, following the innate pull of his ghost sense. Without his mother's headlamp, the tunnels were pitch black. But Danny no longer cared—could not afford to care. He flew blind and intangible. Invisibility seemed to do nothing to deter these creatures who could sense him with unnerving ease. Occasionally he would pass through a spot of numbing cold—memories that weren't his seared his mind: memories of suffering, of death—but he didn't dare stop, didn't dare slow down. Instead he careened off in another direction and kept flying.

The blood was pounding so loudly in his ears that he didn't even realize he'd left behind the mad cries and scrapping of claws until he'd flown through his third room without anything loud and disfigured leaping out at him.

Tense and jumpy, Danny forced himself to slow down. He'd be no good to the ghost or himself if he was panicking before he even saw Legion.

Danny flexed his fingers and turned his eyes to the darkness around him as both hands were surrounded by ghostly fire.

The problem with his ectoplasmic energy was that it made all the darkness around him seem even blacker. Not to mention bathing everything in a freaky phosphorescent glow. It did, however, give him an idea of where he was. The room he was floating in was tall and wide, with metal scaffolding and wooden shelves arranged in tight rows. Crates and rolls of paper were piled on every shelf. Danny's breath misted blue and he turned to his left, looking down a narrow corridor between the shelves.

He floated forward, cautious, hands poised to meet any conflict.

It was quiet, the silence pressed in on his ears.

His ghost sense led him straight to another concrete, grey wall. Putting his palms flat on the wall. Already invisible, he simply made his head intangible and phased it through.

For a long moment Danny could only stare incomprehensively at what he was seeing.

There were hundreds of them. Figures glowing with ethereal light: bodies cloaked in long robes that swept the floor and hid their faces under wide brims. They knelt: hands raised in supplication and in their hands Danny could see tiny blue flames. As one, they murmured low words, voices melding and undulating like some unholy choir.

The main event, Legion paced in the centre of the room. Every bit as fearsome as the first time Danny had encountered him, the wolf-like monstrosity huffed and snarled as it walked. The light was sparing, but even still, Danny could see how the darkness writhed dizzyingly around Legion's form.

From the spot in the wall where Danny had stuck his head out, he was already a couple of stories above the floor; but still, the ceiling arced even farther and higher above his head. He wondered how it was even possible that this palatial labyrinth could all be concealed beneath the museum.

There were pillars, and fancy murals, but Danny wasn't paying attention to the scenery. Bulging out of one wall was a massive dome of gold. In front of that dome Legion paced fitfully. And in front of Legion…

'_Youngblood?'_ Invisible nephrite eyes widened.

The child-ghost looked worse than Danny had ever seen him. Floating on his back, Youngblood's face was a pasty shadow of its usual vibrant green and his form fuzzed and grew foggy around the edges, like it couldn't hold itself together.

Then Legion stopped. There was a lull in the chant from the faceless choir.

The beast stooped, leaned down and placed its nose over Youngblood's chest. It inhaled.

Youngblood's back arched. He convulsed and shuddered in what looked to be horrible agony. A shimmer of blue mist wafted from the childish body and was pulled, forcibly into Legion. And yet, not a single sound escaped the little ghost.

The robed figures were chanting again and now their words were raised frantically. Eagerly.

Danny was frozen. He was very much conscious of he was witnessing, but while half of his mind was trying to convince him to fly down and save Youngblood, the other half was busy supplying vivid imagery of how badly that plan could go.

Legion's terrible maw opened and that was when the screaming began. Shrill, bloodcurdling cries pierced Danny's eardrums. The sounds didn't just come from Youngblood but also from Legion's mouth. The monster's eyes, the same sickly yellow that had been plaguing Danny's dreams for weeks, glinted in vile satisfaction as its teeth descended.

And then Danny could not stand it any longer.

At 120 miles an hour, Danny was faster than a lot of cars; not even Vlad could catch him on a good day. So it was with very little resistance that he shot across the room, ducked under Legion's muzzle and turned tangible only long enough to scoop up Youngblood and then angle up toward the ceiling.

An inhuman bellow deafened his sensitive ears and Danny saw Legion's paw rise up to meet him. Confident that it would pass through him, Danny was completely unprepared when the appendage connected solidly with his side and slapped him right out of the air.

'_But I was intangible!' _was the hybrid's only thought as a wall rushed up to meet him. Closing his eyes, Danny and his unwitting ally passed harmlessly through the thick wall of concrete before landing hard on the ground. The halfling's body connected solidly with the floor, forcing the breath out of his lungs in whoosh. He bounced, rolling over himself.

No sooner had he gained control over his limbs was he gathering his feet under him. Rising to his full height, he wobbled from the vertigo but nonetheless kept a firm hold on the little ghost in his arms. A quick glance confirmed that Youngblood was very unhelpfully unconscious and would probably stay that was for a while. In a moment of brilliance, he remembered the Fenton thermos strapped to his back and quickly shrugged it off.

One brief and noisy lightshow later, Youngblood was vacuumed up into the thermos. Danny had just finished adjusting the soup can's strap back around his torso when a roar of fury deafened him.

_BOOM_

Danny yelped and swivelled around, watching wide-eyed as the wall shuddered and buckled. A sheaf of dirt and grim was knocked loose and rained down on Danny, coating him in dusty sepia.

Another roar came, followed by a thunderous bang that made the wall visibly crack—the very floor shudder.

'_Fly! Fly AWAY! FLY AWAY NOW!'_ The thought screamed through Danny's mind. Panic closed over his heart like a fist of ice. He lifted into the air—

_**BOOM**_

The force with which Legion struck the wall was so strong that it sent shards of concrete spitting outward, right through the intangible Danny. He looked back and saw that a hole, just large enough to fit Legion's massive muzzle, had been punched through the wall. Like a rabid wolf, the beast snarled and snapped at the wall, shoving its face at the hole but not able to get more than it's mouth and nose through it.

'_It can't go intangible…'_ Danny's relief at this realization was bittersweet. After all, who needed intangibility when they could just beat through five feet thick walls of concrete?

And then, quite abruptly, Legion stopped his attack on the wall. The muzzle withdrew and all Danny could see was a dark hole in the wall. A hush fell over the room. Not a whisper of air, just the distant dripping of water, Danny's ears practically rung at the lack of sound.

_What happened? Did it give up?'_ Unconsciously, Danny drifted closer.

The flash of light nearly blinded him. The explosion nearly knocked him out of the air. Reduced to ash and rumble, the wall was blown completely out of existence. Danny only had to glimpse Legion's demonic silhouette standing triumphant against the mushrooming plume of smoke. He bolted.

He could hear it behind him: heavy loping bounds that shook the ground, deep growling and giant teeth that snapped shut inches away from Danny's spectral tail.

Frantically, Danny weaved left and right, he passed through another wall but that was soon demolished by Legion and the chase continued.

Suddenly, Danny found himself in a room filled with walls of plastic. Looking up, he saw that the thick, cloudy sheets were actually covering what looked like huge whale bones that hung suspended from thick chains attached to the ceiling.

'_Why the heck—' _Danny didn't have the luxury of finishing this thought as Legion burst through the wall, skidding into the plastic sheets and bellowing its rage as it got caught on the chains.

And then, inspiration struck.

Legion could touch Danny while he was intangible, but the beast still could not go through solid objects. Suddenly, this observation had become a whole lot more useful.

Danny rose high into the air and passed right through both bone and plastic. He smirked. Legion would get tangled in the sheets and then maybe he could use his thermos to—

A stab of pain in his right shoulder cut off Danny's thoughts and he gasped, doubling over and flickering back to tangibility. His foot caught on a chain, throwing him off course. He tumbled out of the air, and nearly faceplanted into a nearby bone.

He was dimly aware of Legion howling somewhere behind him, but was more focused on the electric pain sparking through his body. He curled in on himself, fisting his hands against the pain. A few agonizing seconds later, the burning stopped, the ache faded but still something felt wrong.

Shaking the incident off, he adjusted the thermos holding Youngblood on his shoulder and lifted into the air, prepared to continue with his plan.

And that was when he realized what was wrong.

'_I can't go intangible!'_ He stared at his hands in horror, trying unsuccessfully to call upon a power that refused to come. In his mind he thought he could hear the sound of dark laughter—But how? How was it possible?

'**No intangibility.'**

A chorus of throaty growling behind him made Danny stiffen. Slowly, he turned, dread tracking its way down his spine like an icy finger.

Where once Legion had stood, there were now about half a dozen beasts of writhing smoke and shadow. They were smaller—each about the size and shape of a fully-grown lion—but this did nothing to diminish Danny's alarm as they each began clawing and bounding up the bones in rapid pursuit.

In the time it took him to process this new danger, one of the beasts had climbed high enough to jump at his head, teeth bared and claws slashing. Danny screamed and ducked, the black form passed over his so closely the claws took off a few hairs. With a yell, he threw himself into the air and sped away from his pursuers.

It was madness: without the power of intangibility, Danny couldn't speed up and was forced to manoeuvre through the maze of plastic sheets. It was so dark he could barely see a foot in front of himself and the only way he was able to pinpoint where Legion's copies were was by the sound of growling or a flash of yellow eyes.

But even still, at least he wasn't gravity bound. All he had to do was keep dodging.

'**Now that's no fun. No more flying.' **Danny had barely a second to wonder at this odd thought in his head when a sharp pain in his shoulder stopped him dead in mid air. And then the light buoyancy that he usually felt in his ghost form abruptly fled from him. His heart plummeted and then his body followed.

Screaming while he fell, Danny only barely managed to grab the edge of a protruding set of bones. As a human, he would never have been able to pull himself up, but in his ghost form he managed it. Limbs shaking from combined fear and adrenaline, he got his feet under him and then realized he was standing on what seemed to be a hand _'Whales have hands?'_ Danny wondered randomly and then he was regretting the delay as one of Legion's shadow lions came leaping at him. The creature tackled him and they both fell, curtains of plastic rippling and flapping around them.

Danny struggled with the monster in midair, trying to keep the snapping jaws from closing around his neck. And then, he felt his back connect hard on something. Instinct took over and he curled, tucked his feet under and then kicked up and hard. With a howl, Legion went flying and Danny used the momentum to flip himself to his feet.

He was standing on a skull. Looking down, he could just spot a set of long bristles and in a weird moment he remembered from Mr. Snyderman's 5th period science class in elementary school that those were a whale's version of teeth. A snarl somewhere to his left had his head swinging around, another sound, this time to his right, made his head swivel in the opposite direction. He could barely see anything. The lack of proper lighting was bad enough, but the maze of plastic sheets and bones that hung from the ceiling made everything worse. Danny's hands were both alight with ghostly fire and still he could only see as far as the nearest plastic sheet. Taking a few shaky steps backward, he touched something and jumped—but sighed when he saw it was just a long chain that his back had hit.

Wait… his back?

Danny threw a hand over his shoulder and with a gasp, realized he'd dropped the thermos holding Youngblood. The very ghost he was trying to rescue. He didn't have time to look for the thermos though as something large and heavy landed behind him, making the skeleton sway dangerously. Danny looked behind him, saw the sinister yellow eyes and bolted.

He sprinted along the skull, leaped—limbs wheeling in the air—to the ridged backbone and kept going. He could feel the Hound behind him, roaring and snapping at his heels, but without flight or intangibility Danny could go no faster. Ahead, he saw a gap in the plastic sheets and another, flatter bone. Judging the distance, Danny sucked in his breath and jumped as far as he could.

Mid air, he twisted around and saw Legion leaning back on its haunches. The moment it pounced, Danny let fly a well-aimed ecto blast that hit the creature directly in the chest. It howled as it flew out of view.

Danny landed on the sloping, ivory surface in a summersault, scrambling to his feet a little dizzily, amazed at himself for pulling that stunt off.

Abruptly, the sheet of plastic near his head burst into black flames and he yelped, scrambling backward just in time to avoid having his head taken off as another one of Legion's duplicates jumped through the burning hole.

He jumped, barely even registering where he was going. After a few heart stopping moments in the air it was only sheer luck that he managed to belly flop onto another bone: a long spinal column. His feet hung in the air, and he began to slide backward over the smooth surface. Panicking, he dug his nails in, kicking with his feet, he gripped the plastic in his hands and somehow managed to haul himself up onto the surface.

The Hound, glowing eyes and teeth like daggers set in a halo of scorching black, snarled as it leapt toward the spine. It landed with much more agility than Danny had, its claws steadying its weight and digging into the bone with painful scratching nose.

"_**You dare interrupt our feeding."**_ There was no movement from the beast's mouth, yet Legion's voice resonated deeply in the teen's mind and ears. The voice was low, almost hypnotic, and it shot straight through Danny's heart.

Danny fisted his hands, gathering himself against the power of that voice. "You won't get him!" He announced, rather hollowly, since he didn't even know where Youngblood was.

Again, he tried to access his ability of flight, of intangibility and mentally cursed when he hit against a wall in his mind.

Why—_Why_—hadn't he flew through the ceiling and escaped when he'd had the chance?

Another beast, identical to the one in front of him, landed a few paces behind him and Danny looked between the frothing, growling creatures with growing anxiety.

"_**You come uninvited into our home." **_The beast before him growled.

"_**You unduly desecrate ceremony."**_ The one behind him intoned.

"_**You steal from us with impertinence."**_

"_**Yet you remain unrepentant?"**_

Danny couldn't help it: the teenage rebelliousness bubbled up. He grinned cheekily, shrugged. "Yep. Unrepentant, that's me. Unrepentant, unapologetic, unreasonable and unavoidably in your way; is it that _un_believable?"

"_**You are a fool, and you will join the ghost in his fate!"**_ The beast in front of him broke into a loping run and jumped at him.

Danny didn't think. He lashed out with ice. The blue power left sprinkles of snow in the air as it slammed into the Hound. The creature shrieked as it was blown to the side into a sheet of plastic. The duplicate behind him took advantage of Danny's distraction and charged. Feeling the creature coming at him, Danny tried to turn and ice that one too. But the plastic beneath his feet slipped. In a moment of obtuse clumsiness, his feet tangled in each other and he toppled over the side of the slender bone. A snapping jaw just grazed his shoulder as he fell.

Ivory flashing before his eyes and Danny's hand snapped out—grabbed. He lifted himself up and realized he was standing in a ribcage.

For a moment, all he could hear was his own breathing. His ears tingled in the silence. Where was Legion? Where—

The beast came exploding out of the sheets behind him with an infuriated roar. It blew through the bone and Danny screamed as he was suddenly underneath the monster and falling to the ground.

Teeth half the size of his face snapped down millimetres from his nose and Danny arched his neck backward, using one glowing palm to hold the creature's maw away from him while he planted the other flat against the monster's midsection and let ectoplasm and ice explode outward.

He managed to throw Legion away from him, but not before gaining three gashes along his side to accompany the ones curling around his neck.

He impacted the ground hard and groaned; it felt like he'd just realigned his spine with the floor. Picking himself up from a Danny-shaped imprint in the ground, he shook off the coating of frost left on his hand after that last attack.

Barely on his hands and knees, Danny didn't have time to prepare as one of Legion's hounds came barrelling into his side, knocking him clear off his feet.

He rolled to a stop and before he could push himself to his feet, another duplicate pounced on him. Danny grit his teeth as the hound placed its full weight—that of a fully-grown feline king—into the forepaws digging into his shoulders.

"_**Look into my eyes, Halfling."**_

Piercing yellow eyes. Eyes that lied. Eyes that violated. Danny ripped his gaze away and squeezed his eyes shut.

"NO!" He screamed and lashed out with ice. It didn't freeze the beast, but pushed it back far enough for Danny to stumble to his feet.

Panting and clutching his bleeding wounds, Danny tried to think of a plan. The only thing coming to mind was his Ghostly Wail. But if it failed then he'd be human and then he'd be wasted. So yeah, not such a great plan.

The sound of nails screeching over stone made Danny cringe and he glanced over at Legion. Now that he was on the ground he could see four—no five pairs of glowing yellow eyes. Two were closer, and from the light of his glowing hands Danny could make out their shifting bodies. But three were farther away, clustered together.

Five duplicates—_five!_—and if they all recombined Danny wouldn't stand a chance.

Danny's breath was speeding up, and his mind was beginning to give mixed advice.

'_**Give in.'**_ A part of his brain urged.

'_No!'_ Danny shook his hear with the fierceness of his refusal. He'd never give up; why would he even think of it?

'_**Why not?'**_ The dissenting voice whispered. _**'There's no light at the end of this tunnel for you. Just give in.'**_

And then, inspiration slapped Danny over the head.

Reaching down to his mother's utility belt, Danny patted down the pockets until he found what he was looking for. With a grin, he reached into the pocket and pulled out the Lunch Lady's memento.

Iridescent and star-like, Danny had to make a conscious effort to look away from the beautiful stone. Legion had fallen silent and Danny saw that they—all five of them—were staring greedily at the gem.

"_**Give it to us."**_ As one, they murmured. The five duplicates stalked forward, stopping barely three paces in front of Danny. They bared their teeth and pawed the ground impatiently. _**"Give it to us and we will spare your soul and that of your ghostly friend."**_

Danny closed his fist around the stone "No." He refused.

The shadows converged. A source-less wind picked up and then Danny yelled, throwing his arms over his head when the breeze turned into a gale storm. His hair was tossed into his eyes and dust got into his mouth and nose. Feeling his feet being pulled out from underneath him, he dropped to his knees.

Danny felt more than saw the giant shadow that enveloped him. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked up. Slowly, he turned, and looked; up… up…

"_**Then I will rend it from your bloodless fingers!" **_Legion, singular now and several stories tall, bellowed and its maw bore down on Danny.

He shook as he waited, waited until he could hear the shrieking of the souls in side the monster's mouth, waited until his head and shoulders were inside the maw and he could see the madness gleaming in the eyes of the souls within. And then, when he could bear the wait no longer, Danny opened his palms, directed them at the Hound through the stone, and let loose with the strongest energy blast he could—screaming as he did it—tearing straight through the back of the beast's throat.

White filled the room—bright, merciless, cleansing light—and was split by a yowl of agony. Danny had closed his eyes, anticipated the light, but even then the backs of his eyelids lit up blindingly with the resulting explosion. Cutting off his power, Danny curled his fist around the stone, raised both forearms to protect his face, and cracked his eyes open.

Legion lay panting on its side, maw gaping, sharp teeth gnashing at the air. Its eyes regarded Danny hatefully but their power was diminished. The darkness shivered around its dog-like form, but already the demon was finding its feet. Its pants were turning into deep growls.

Danny did not wait to find out if the monster would attack him again. He outright turned his back to Legion and ran. By some miracle, Youngblood, still unconscious but apparently unhurt, was floating on his back not far away, the battered shreds of a ruined Fenton Thermos beneath him. Danny didn't pause, and simply snatched up the child ghost by the waist as he flew by. Somehow, along the way, his feet had left the ground and he nearly whopped with glee over the return of his powers.

"_**This is far from the end, Halfling."**_

With those parting words, Legion disappeared in a swirl of converging black energies. Danny didn't question his luck; he simply turned his head upward and sped toward the ceiling, phasing through it with an ease that he swore he'd never again take for granted.

Danny appeared over ground in the middle of a grassy lawn. A green dome swirled above his head, but beyond that, the rising sun was bleaching the word in pink hues. Like an agitated bird, his head snapped back and forth as wide eyes scanned his surroundings. He needed to get out of the museum before Legion changed its mind and came after him. In the distance, he spotted the break in the ghost shield where Jazz would be waiting for him and he raced over to it.

"Danny, my god—!" Jazz's hand went to her mouth when she saw him.

He supposed he must look a sight: bleeding from a dozen different wounds, hair wild and covered from head to toe in dust and grime, but Danny didn't feel any of his wounds. He supposed he had yet to come down from his adrenaline high.

"Here, Jazz!" He said, dumping Youngblood on the ground and shoving the ghost partly through the space in the ghost shield that the Fenton Jack was holding open. "Grab his shoulders!"

"Whose?" Jazz asked quizzically. "Whose shoulders? And where're Sam and Tucker?"

This last statement made a thrill of fear run through Danny. Hadn't Clockwork brought Sam and Tucker back? What if he'd failed?

No. Clockwork couldn't have failed. Danny trusted the elder ghost with his life. Clockwork said he'd take Tucker and Sam somewhere safe so maybe he took them to FentonWorks. He soothed himself with this thought and came back to the matter at hand.

"Sam and Tucker are safe. Just help me—It's that ghost which adults can't see, Jazz! Just reach down and grab. He's right here." Following Danny's lead, Jazz managed to find Youngblood's head and shoulders, grasping the material of his clothes and pulling the ghost through.

Youngblood had nearly cleared the shield when Jazz looked up past Danny's shoulder and screamed.

"Danny!"

He didn't even have time to look around when a large hand clamped down on his shoulder and spun him to the side, slamming him up against the shield. Sparks leapt up around his body and Danny yelped. His cry was abruptly cut off when the hand came up to his neck, clamping down cruelly on his windpipe.

"DANNY!"

Choking, he reached up to try and dislodge the arm. But his fingers curled uselessly around corded muscles that were like steel cables. His eyes came up to meet orbs of coal. The man holding him grinned maliciously as he lifted the gasping halfa higher, making Danny's legs dangle.

Danny grit his teeth and brought up his right arm, intent to use the spirit crystal in his hand to blow the creature away. But before he could fully raise his arm, the man, realizing Danny's intentions, dug his free hand into Danny's wrist, then pulled his hand up and bit down brutally on the fleshy part between Danny's index finger and thumb.

The stone fell from Danny's hand and the last breath in his lungs was released in a high-pitched scream.

"DANNY! LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

Between Danny's squinting eyes, he saw a flash of green then the pressure around his neck was gone. Danny fell onto his hands and knees gasping wildly for air and had to concentrate very hard not to give in to the darkness and turn human.

"DANNY! COME ON! THIS WAY! HURRY!"

Danny saw that Jazz had managed to squirm halfway through the gap in the shield to shoot his attacker and was now shoving her way back through. Heeding her words, Danny used his hands to scramble forwards, not even pausing as he roughly scooped up the stone from the ground, tearing out some soil and grass as he did so. Sparing one glance back, he would have laughed at the sight of the giant man tangled in the Jack-O'-Ninetails, if he wasn't still gasping to regain his breath.

Jazz had cleared the shield and Danny dove at the hole, squirming through as fast as he could.

There was a yell behind him, then he felt a hand latch onto his ankle and begin to pull him back. Loosing purchase, Danny slipped onto his side and yelled out. He reached outward with his hand and Jazz was there, pulling him as hard as she could.

It was a vicious tug of war, but the creature at Danny's feet had the advantage of superhuman strength. Looking down, Danny aimed a finger and shot the man with a ghost ray. Immediately, his ankles were released and Danny flew through the hole.

Curling up, he threw himself onto his stomach and swiped the Fenton Jack out of the hole. The ghost-human shield closed and Danny breathed a sigh of true relief.

He lay there, staring up at the man before him—a misshapen monster, a soul stolen and enslaved by Legion—a pitiable creature who hissed and spat at Danny loathingly. It didn't bother trying to pass the glowing shield though. Instead it took a few steps back then abruptly melted into the ground.

They were gone. He was safe. They were all safe.

He had done it.

"Ahhnn…" From his throat came a wordless sound of relief as he flopped onto his back. It seemed that his exhaustion was finally catching up to him. He ready to pass out right there on the grass…

"Danny! Danny, please, don't go to sleep. Come on…" A hand gently shook his shoulder and Danny grimaced as it aggravated some of his wounds.

"I'm sorry, Danny, but I can't let you go to sleep. You could have a head injury."

Danny groaned, cracking open an eye to look at his sister. "Ah dinna ge' hi' onna hea'." He slurred. At her confused look, he swallowed, sucking on a tongue which suddenly felt swollen in his mouth. "I didn't get hit on the head. I'm fine." He repeated more coherently.

"I'm _sure_ you're fine." Came her sarcastic answer. Her fingers carded through his hair, feeling his scalp, and he couldn't quite bite back the hum of sleepy content that sensation caused. "Okay, I trust you. I'll let you sleep. But first, where are Sam and Tucker?"

In an instant, Danny had shot up, panic shooting him into false awareness. "That's right! We gotta get home! I think Sam and Tucker are there, but I'm not sure. Clockwork said he'd take them somewhere safe."

"Clockwork?" Jazz asked from her kneeling position at his side. But Danny wasn't listening, he'd already pushed himself to his feet.

"Uhg…" He put a hand to his head and swayed as the word abruptly tilted 90 degrees to the left.

A hand slipped under his arms and Danny smiled thankfully at Jazz, who supported him against her side.

"Are you sure you're well enough to fly us back?" She asked worriedly.

"Sure, sure. Yeah…" He nodded and looked up to the sky.

There was a flash of blue-white energy and suddenly Danny was human.

"Huh…" He said vaguely. "Didn't mean for that to happen." He tried to take a step forward, and his legs buckled. Jazz gasped as his full weight suddenly dropped on her. It was all she could do to lower him slowly to the grass.

"That's it, I'm calling a taxi. You rest there." Jazz pulled out her cell phone and dialed.

On his bed of grass and stones, Danny was already out like a light.

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_End Chapter 24_

_To Be Continued…_

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	25. Saved ?

**Hiya!**

November's over already…?

**Disclaimer:** Y'know, I keep adding these at the beginning of each chapter, but I don't really know if you really HAVE to… everyone does it, but is it a rule on FFdotnet? Does anyone know?

I don't own _Carmilla_.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulchre**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 25 — **Saved…?_

It was a very awkward ride back to FentonWorks.

Danny's wounds, though they healed faster than a normal person's, still transferred back to his human form, resulting in his white t-shirt quickly being stained a rather conspicuous shade of bloody red. Jazz had bandaged the wounds as best she could with the emergency first-aid kit in her purse, then loaned Danny her jacket to hide the splotches on his shirt. Unfortunately, not even her jacket could properly hide the scratches on his upper neck.

Then there was the issue of Youngblood, who Danny refused to leave behind.

And so, Jazz sat shotgun in the taxi, trying to distract the driver who kept shooting strange looks at her brother. Danny was oblivious as he dozed against the window; what looked to be inflamed claw marks on his neck disappeared under the collar of a hot pink jacket and his arm was curled around the invisible ghost lying in his lap.

A very awkward taxi ride, indeed.

It didn't help that the drive had ended up costing her all the money she had in her wallet.

Pulling up in front of FentonWorks, the car slowed to a gradual stop.

"Um… Is he all right?" The driver asked when Jazz had to walk around the car to open the back door for her brother, who had slept through her attempts to rouse him.

"He's fine." She assured as she opened the door and casually stopped Danny from flopping out and falling onto the sidewalk. Whatever had happened in the museum had taken a lot out of him. "He's just a little tired. We were at our aunt's house and he was up all night playing video games." She was getting better at lying, she thought.

The incredulous look the taxi driver shot her spoke strongly to the contrary.

Leaning closer to Danny's ear, she called his name and shook his shoulder, trying to be as gentle as possible.

He winced under her touch and she bit her lip in sympathy. Jazz hated waking her brother like this, but it was the only way she'd be able to get him away quickly and without causing a scene.

"Danny, come on. We're home." She said.

"Home…?" He opened bleary eyes, stared right through her.

"Yeah, remember? We need to meet Sam and Tucker." She said pointedly.

"Sam and Tuck… Oh." A little more awareness came back into his eyes. He looked down to his lap and gathered something she could not see into his arms. It was disconcerting to watch Danny mime holding a child, knowing he was holding a ghost and yet not be able to see anything.

"Yeh sure he's fine?" The nosey driver asked again, peering at Danny who was struggling to coordinate his limbs as he climbed out of the car. "He looks like he's been roughed up some." Jazz knew the man was referring to the ugly marks stretching across Danny's neck, but there was nothing she could have done to avoid that. His other wounds had been much worse, and she'd used up all her gauze wrapping those up. By the time she'd reached his neck there was nothing left, short of tearing strips off her own shirt, which, she was pretty sure, would have caused an even bigger scene.

"He's fine. Thank you." She said with a tone of finality, shutting the door behind Danny who had finally dragged himself out of the car.

The taxi driver gave them one last stare before shrugging and throwing the car into drive. Watching the taxi speed away, Jazz sighed. The adults in this town were either oblivious or alarmingly apathetic. Either way, she supposed it did come in handy on occasion.

"Miss Fenton and Mr. Fenton, what are you two doing out at this hour?"

Jazz gasped and spun around. There, coming up the sidewalk towards them was Mr. Lancer. She glanced down to Danny in panic, but his jet hair hid his expression from view. He seemed to be aware enough of their surroundings, though, to realize that clutching an invisible bundle to his chest probably didn't look very good. He lowered his arm and brought his right hand up so that it looked more like he was crossing his arms. As he moved, Jazz briefly got a glimpse of the puncture wounds where that zombie-thing had bit her brother and cringed as he pressed the still oozing injury into her jacket. It was still an odd posture, but not quite as noticeable as his previous one. Nonetheless, as Mr. Lancer neared, Jazz subtly placed Danny behind her, knowing that he was in no condition to be making intelligent conversation.

Or intelligent lies, as it were.

"Uhm… what do you mean Mr. Lancer?" She asked, trying to gauge how much the man had seen. As opposed to his usual shirt and tie, Mr. Lancer was in a jogging outfit, probably out for a morning walk or something: a new diet plan, probably. Prune juice with breakfast, lunch and dinner hadn't worked well for he constitution, as Jazz recalled.

"Well, Mr. Fenton is hardly an early bird. As his homeroom teacher, I'm well aware of this." He sent a dry look in her brother's direction, but frowned when Danny didn't even respond, his head staying bowed. "So I'm curious as to what you two are doing at 6:30am on a Sunday. I saw you coming out of the taxi."

Jazz kept her plastic smile on her face, though mentally she was lamenting the fact that Lancer had seen the taxi. Now she had two things to explain. "Uh… well… Mr. Lancer, our Uncle was just in town for the past couple of Days. He had a… a meeting. Yeah, so he just left and Danny and I went to go see him off at the airport."

"I see. " Mr. Lancer was still looking at Danny, probably noting his dishevelled hair and the fact that he was wearing Jazz's coat. "A meeting you say?"

"Ghost stuff. My whole family's into it." She equivocated, adding a roll of her eyes for effect. Danny was listing against her side and she struggled to inconspicuously keep her balance under his weight .

"I see." Lancer repeated. "Now, if only—_Mr. Fenton!"_

"Huh? What? Wherezaghost?" Jerking upright, Danny's head snapped up and he looked around with glassy eyes.

"_Carmilla!_ What happened to your neck, Mr. Fenton?" Mr. Lancer cried, eyes glued to the tears across Danny's skin.

Danny's eyes widened as he realized his error and he looked to Jazz in desperation. But she was blanking just as badly, if not worse. She didn't have a way to fix this one.

"I-I-uh… We-we've got to get going, right Danny?" She said, wide eyes flying between Lancer—who was staring at Danny, transfixed—and Danny himself, who seemed ready to bolt

"Right." Her brother nodded vigorously, then tried to mask his wince as he pulled the wounds on his neck. "We gotta go. Nice seeing you Mr. Lancer!" And, with surprising agility for his state of mind, he practically sprinted up the driveway to their house. Jazz didn't dare look back at their teacher as she followed Danny closely.

When she reached the front door, she saw Danny standing there, waiting and twitching impatiently. Understanding his problem, she swung her purse around and plunged a hand in to find her keys. It made sense that Danny never carried his own keys. After all, who needed keys when they could just fly through their window? However, with Mr. Lancer probably watching their every move, they had to enter the house the normal way.

Jazz bit her tongue as her hand fumbled around, searching for the keys. She usually always kept them in the same spot: the zipper pocket on the side. But this time she must've just dropped them into her bag. Of all the times to misplace them!

"_Jazz._" Danny hissed under his breath. "_Hurry up!_"

Her fingers closed around a ring of metal and she let out the breath she'd been holding. "Is he following us?" She asked Danny urgently.

"No…" He glanced sideways through his bangs. "He's just standing there, watching us."

Jazz jammed the key into the lock, twisted.

The Fenton kids entered their home, closed the door, then, together, leaned on it in relief.

"Saved." Danny exhaled.

"Until Monday." Jazz pointed out, making Danny groaned. Then his eyes caught on the stairs and he groaned again.

"Here, I'll help you." She said, putting an arm around her little brother's waist. He flashed her a grateful smile as they began trudging up the stairs. Feeling something hard brush against her leg, Jazz looked down to see their mother's utility belt was still fastened around Danny's hips. So it had made the transition with him between ghost and human mode? Strange that the belt made the transition but his clothes never did…

Now was not the time to think of such things though as she and Danny arrived at Danny's room. Pushing open the door, she was more than relieved to see both Sam and Tucker, unconscious but seemingly unharmed, on Danny's floor. It was a testament to how wiped Danny was that he didn't even see his friends as he staggered into his room.

Leading her brother to his bed, she got him to lie down. Washing his wounds would have to wait. First he needed to lie down before he passed out completely.

"Sam and Tucker…" He protested as she slipped her coat off him and guided him under his covers.

"They're safe." She smiled at him proudly. "You saved them."

"Clockwork." He reminded her, his unfocused eyes mostly closed.

"Yeah, he helped too I guess." She said, trying to ignore the red stains on her brother's shirt as she pulled the comforter around his body. The things she did for him…

Well… if her grand plan to become a doctor didn't work out she could always make millions off her 'My Life as a Superhero's Big Sister' book.

The smile she tried to muster at this joke was a little too painful though, so Jazz let it drop as she backed away from her brother. He shifted, tucking his hands under himself, and fell asleep almost immediately. She was even able to spot the moment when he dropped off, the distressed crease between his brows finally smoothing out. Flicking off the lights, she figured she could at least get in four hours of sleep before her parents got suspicious.

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Jazz's alarm had gone off hours ago. Mind muddled from lack of sleep, she'd merely grabbed it and pulled it into bed with her before returning to dream world. When she finally did open her bleary eyes, the small battery clock in her hands read 2:13 pm and she nearly threw herself out of her bed in dismay.

Tossing the clock back onto the table, she flipped the blanket off herself and pushed herself to her feet. 6 am to 2 pm. God, she'd gotten eight hours of sleep without even meaning to. It was amazing that she could go with only one or two hours of sleep the day before an exam, but the one time she stayed up for one of Danny's nightly romps she was dead to the world the instant her head hit the pillow.

'_Danny!'_

The memory of last night rushed back to Jazz and she gasped, speeding out of her room.

She hadn't bothered to change before going to sleep, so she felt uncomfortably grimy in jeans and t-shirt. But personal hygiene would have to take a back seat—at least until she got things sorted out with her brother and his friends.

'_Thank God it's Sunday.'_

The first thing she did was stand at the top of the staircase and listen for any sign that her parents were still in the house. Since her mother hadn't come to wake either her or Danny, it was a safe bet that her parents had both left the house early in the day, but Jazz had to be sure. After a few seconds of hearing nary a raised voice or wayward explosion, she nodded in satisfaction and spun around.

Now came the difficult part.

Cracking the door to Danny's room open, Jazz saw that all three teens were just as she'd left them. Sam and Tucker lay on the floor, chest rising rhythmically with sleep and Danny was so twisted in the covers that he resembled nothing so much as a blue worm with a mop of messy black hair.

Smiling to herself at her brother's antics, Jazz crossed the room to his bed. Along the way, she bumped into something cold and invisible. Gasping, she realized that it must've been the child ghost that Danny had brought home with him. Reaching out blindly, she tried to find the body again to no avail: she must have knocked the ghost away when she bumped into it—him.

She scrunched her face. This was beyond odd. But then again, she had a half-ghost for a younger brother. She should be used to this sort of thing.

Reaching Danny's side, she was able to pull away the blankets around his jaw just far enough to see that the wicked claw marks stretching from his ear to his collar bone had almost completely healed: leaving behind only a set of angry pink lines that would be gone by the end of the day. She remembered another wound: an ugly, black bruise blossoming over Danny's right shoulder, and knew, without even needing to check, that that bruise had probably completely vanished by now.

She sighed. No, she'd never get used to this.

Jazz wondered why the thought of her brother's preternatural healing made her feel so resigned. She should be happy that he wouldn't have to suffer aches and pains for days; even sprains and hairline fractures were not a problem for him. He healed fast… It was like wiping a blackboard clean, just to mark it up all over again. And again. And again.

Maybe it was because it made it easier to ignore the wounds, to ignore how he continuously threw himself into danger for her and everyone else. _'If you didn't heal so fast, would you be more careful with your heroics? Would Mom and Dad finally notice what is happening to you, would you finally tell them your secret?'_ These were hopeless thoughts though, not worth anything more than making her already depressed state even more depressed.

She was running her hand through his hair, noting that it was getting a little long, and Danny unconsciously leaned into the touch. His face was peaceful; at least his demons had let him rest for once. It hadn't escaped Jazz how exhausted her brother had been recently, there were dark rings under his eyes that she knew for a fact hadn't been put there by late-night tussles with the Box Ghost.

'_Looks like Danny's terminology's rubbing off on me.'_ Jazz thought with amusement, remembering how not to long ago she'd been calling the annoying, box-obsessed ghost 'Crate Creep'.

It was probably time to wake her brother.

A low groan behind her made Jazz look over her shoulder in surprise.

"Tucker?" She exclaimed.

A pair of fierce black eyes snapped up at her announcement—and narrowed.

She barely had time for a strangled cry before Tucker launched himself at her, snarling, a hand clawing for her throat.

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Danny's eyes shot open at the sound of his sister's scream and he wriggled and strained against the covers tangled around him. All he succeeded in doing was rolling himself unceremoniously off the bed, landing in a heap on the ground with a muffled 'Oomph'.

The pile of blankets seemed to give a disgruntled exhale before they were lit by a flash of light. Danny let the covers slide through him, his powers driving him to wakefulness with a burst of frigid air. Getting to his feet, he stared uncomprehendingly at the scene before him.

"Tucker?" He frowned in bafflement, wondering why his best friend was on top of his sister and why he looked so mad.

"Danny! Get him off me!" Jazz shrieked as Tucker clawed for her face. She wrenched herself to the side and his hand tangled in her long hair.

"Tucker! Jazz!" Galvanized into action, Danny tackled his friend and they both went flying. A few strands of Jazz's hair were yanked out by Tucker's fist and Danny thought he heard her yelp in pain, but he couldn't spare the time to send his sister an apology as he grabbed Tucker's flailing arms. The two boys tumbled across the ground, grappling. It wasn't until Danny managed to meet Tucker's eyes that realization pierced through him like an electric current.

"You… get out of him!" Danny yelled and brought a foot underneath himself before planting it straight into Tucker's midsection. The boy went flying, hitting Danny's dresser with a bang that shook the cupboards before flopping to the ground. Tucker snarled, lifting himself up on all fours like a panther ready to pounce. Where light hazel eyes used to twinkle mischievously, there were now twin pits of ebony.

Danny had fallen asleep with the spirit stone in his hand, which he now brandished in front of him as though it were a holy cross and Tucker a vampire. The Lunch Lady's memento gleamed in his hand like a cycling kaleidoscope, but Tucker's lip merely curled in a derisive smirk.

"You think that trinket will help you, halfling dog?" He said in a voice too hoarse to be his own, head tilting sideways as he regarded Danny with disturbingly wide eyes. "Attack me." It goaded. "Attack me and see what it does to the human."

"What's going on? Is Tucker being overshadowed?" Jazz wanted to know. Her question went unanswered as both boys ignored her and continued their battle of wills.

Danny hesitated, then grit his teeth and lowered the gem. He couldn't attack the creature if there was even a possibility that he'd hurt Tucker. But, he could try to force the parasite out another way.

He grinned and raised a glowing green fist.

A few blasts later and Danny's dresser was in ruins. Tucker's green shirt had holes burnt into it, but otherwise he looked none the worse for wear.

"That won't work either." Came the twisted voice from Tucker's mouth. "I'm no ghost." He lunged at Danny, who raised his hands to ward him off.

_Thunk._

Inches away from reaching the half-ghost, Tucker staggered, his head falling back. Eyelids fluttered closed over pools of black and he crumpled to the ground, unmoving.

Danny and Jazz looked up in shock at the person standing behind Tucker's prone form.

"What?" Sam asked, hefting Danny's math text. When no answer was forthcoming from either sibling, she just shrugged and looked around. Her eyes alighted on something in the corner and one eyebrow rose.

"Hey Danny, why's Youngblood floating over your table?"

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_End Chapter 25_

_To Be Continued…_

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And Sam and Tucker are back! Though perhaps not in the capacity that we were hoping for, hehehe. Bonus internet cookies to anyone who can tell where the title _Carmilla _comes from!

Review! Pleasepleaseplease!

To: **pearl84, Phanfan925, Rogue Alice **(;P), **MidnightResWri, aslan333 **and **smallvillephantom14,** thank you! :)

**Adio!**


	26. That Might Scar

**Hiya!**

I-It's an update! Yes it is! And… and… _I can't believe I survived exam week ohmygoodness! _Seriously, I've have 8 hours of sleep in the last 4 days, my coffee haze is making the world slightly surreal and I'm STILL grinning XD

(I'm SO going to end up crashing hard tonight, oh boy)

**Disclaimer:** Ownership of Danny Phantom goes to Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulchre**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 26 — **That Might Scar_

"Okay, you sure this is going to work?" Jazz asked as she jogged down the stairs to their parents' lab.

"No." Danny, in ghost form, admitted as he rolled Tucker's unconscious body off his shoulder. Lowering the other boy to the ground, his legs merged into a spectral tail as he arced upward to fetch the Fenton Ghost Catcher. He hefted the glorified dreamcatcher by its narrow stand and set it down in front of Tucker before drifting up to consider the device. He cupped his chin in one hand, the other gripping his elbow.

"Does this thing even work?" Jazz wondered, flicking one of the feathers attached to the sides of the large metallic circle at the top of the device.

"Sure it does." Danny nodded. "Remember that time a few months ago when I… uh…" He faltered, hands suspended mid-shrug.

"Grew a ponytail overnight and started acting like a surfer bum while your accidental doppelganger was busy being a Marvel comics reject sporting a bedsheet?" Sam interjected dryly folding her arms as she scanned the remnants of the Jack and Maddie's latest experiment strewn across the stainless steel lab table.

"Yeah, that." Danny pointed at his friend, not even bothering to be embarrassed. "Well, it's because I'd wanted a break from all the ghost hunting and threw myself through this thing." And the hybrid stuck his hand through the green webbing interlacing the wide circle. Jazz gasped as not one hand, but _two_ emerged from the other side: one the pale, fleshy tone of Danny's human half, the other encased in a glowing glove. "See, it really is a ghost catcher. Well… sort of." He amended. "It splits the ghost from the human."

"Among other things." Sam muttered. On the table near her was a row of plastic containers holding staining solutions. Next to them stood a rusty ring stand held a covered beaker of viscous neon pink liquid over a slow burning flame. She watched the unattended experiment, eyebrow arching as the liquid undulated and bubbled.

"Yeah, uhm…" Danny pulled his hand—his single hand—back through the net and ran it through his snowy hair, grasping the short strands at his nape sheepishly. "I guess it works differently for me 'cause I'm only half a ghost."

Jazz was still staring at the spot where her brother had split himself into two.

…Split into two…

"Of course! That's why there were two of you running around! And I thought I was going crazy! You!" She smacked Danny's arm. "How could you do that to me?"

"Huh?" He stared at her, bemused, as he rubbed away the tingling of her slap. Then his mouth formed a small 'o' of realization. "Ohh, I get it. You saw… before even… and then after… and you thought… ohh… Sorry." His shining eyes weren't at all apologetic and Jazz was tempted to smack him again. But when her eyes caught on the claw marks curling over his throat and the faded hand-shaped bruising just visible over his collar, she stalled, smile fading.

Sam, stepping away from the lab table, shook her head at Danny as she approached the siblings and the Fenton Ghost Catcher. "You know, it says something about how well I know you that I was able to understand exactly what you just said."

"Speaking of which," Danny swooped down to land in front of Sam to gaze seriously into her eyes. "I'm really sorry I didn't listen to you before. I know you only wanted to find out what was going on at the museum, but I should have explained to you why I didn't want to go back there instead of getting angry."

Here violet eyes widened in shock, then lowered as she rubbed one hand over her arm. "Look, don't worry about it, Danny. It… was a bad decision all around so why don't we move on?"

'_**You're apologizing again.**'_ The sinister voice that only Danny could hear sneered in his ear.

'_It's worth it this time.'_ He said back resolutely. _'They went through something terrible—'_

'_**And you didn't?**'_

'—_because of my thoughtlessness and the least I can do is apologize.'_ Danny continued, pretending he hadn't even heard the voice's jibe.

Looking back at Sam, he saw that she, lost in her own thoughts, hadn't noticed his brief distraction. "But you're okay, right? No voices in your head, nothing trying to take over your body—no ghost, I mean?" He asked concernedly.

"I don't _feel _overshadowed." She answered slowly. "That's good, right?"

Jazz glanced at Sam. "That's a rather odd thing to say." Sam's eyes flashed in annoyance, but Jazz persisted. "How do you _feel _overshadowed? If you were then you wouldn't be able to tell, and if you—."

"Your eyes are normal, so that's a good sign." Danny cut in quickly, sensing the beginning of an argument.

"That reminds me!" Jazz snapped her fingers. "Danny, do you know why Tucker's eyes were black? And the thing in his said it wasn't a ghost—"

"Let's just get him through the Ghost Catcher, 'kay?" Danny interrupted brusquely, not meeting his sister's eyes as he gathered Tucker in his arms. "Sorry dude, but this is for your own good."

As he tossed Tucker at the Fenton Ghost Catcher, Danny was struck with a sense of déjà vu. The last time he'd done this was when Tucker had wished himself to be a half-ghost, forcing Danny to remove the malevolent spirit inside his friend. That time, the exorcism had gone smoothly, he could only hope the same would happen this time.

However, the moment Tucker hit the net and a flash of black energy exploded outward, Danny knew smooth was the last thing this was going to be.

A howl of agony ripped through the air as Tucker appeared on the other side of the Ghost Catcher. He hit the ground shrieking and convulsing. All three teens ran to Tucker's side but they could only watch as something black and viscous began to form in the air above Tucker. Danny thought of using the Fenton Thermos, or even firing a ghost ray at it, but even as the idea occurred to him it was too late. In the span of a second, the putrid energy had attached itself back to Tucker, absorbing back into the boy's skin.

A maniacal laugh began to sound from Tucker's mouth and Danny saw a half circle of black appear under his eyelids as he began to wake.

Almost instantly, Jazz leaped over and strapped a breathing mask onto Tucker's face. The teen's eyes immediately opened in rage, but Jazz simply pressed a button on the mask, allowing it to fill with blue mist and Tucker's head knocked onto the ground as he fell back into unconsciousness.

For a moment, all three teens just stood around Tucker, staring at the unmoving body with eerie calm.

"GKO Gas?" Danny remarked offhandedly, already knowing the answer. Jazz simply nodded as she removed the mask from Tucker's nose and mouth.

"GKO Gas?" Sam questioned.

"Ghost Knock-Out Gas." Danny clarified. "Supposed to knock ghosts unconscious—ideal for dissecting, molecule ripping, and all that fun stuff. It works. Problem is, it knocks humans out just as completely."

"Hm…" Sam said, sounding much too thoughtful for his taste.

"Oie, I know that look," he said pointing at his friend. "You better not be planning on knocking out the cheerleading squad before the next school pep rally, or something, are you?"

"Oh, you have _no _idea what I'm planning." Her evil grin was a little scary, though the look was quickly wiped off her face as she stared down at Tucker soberly. "Seriously though, how long will he be out?"

Danny looked at Jazz, who shrugged.

"Anywhere from one hour to one day." The elder sibling said unhelpfully.

Sam sighed. "It's too bad there's an evil ghost taking over his body, or I'd so be giving him a make-over right now."

Danny grinned, though it was only half-hearted.

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Hours later, Danny and Sam were still in the lab watching Tucker's unconscious body. Jazz had gone upstairs to order pizza, since no one was in any mood to cook and the Fenton siblings had no idea when their parents would be returning home.

Sam was busy at the computer, typing and clicking as she tried to search for any information on Tucker's mysterious ailment. Danny however, had hardly moved from his sitting position near Tucker's head. He'd allowed himself to lapse back into his human form, but was still tense and twitchy. His mind was awhirl with thought: a montage on fast-forward. Each image flipped by sharp enough to set his teeth on edge, but too fragmented and fleeting to focus on.

So he drifted, letting his mind run on autopilot while his eyes stayed fixated on the source of his anxiety.

There was a terrifyingly familiar black stain on Tucker's cheek. After that horrible moment when they'd tossed Tucker through the Fenton Ghost Catcher, Jazz had leaned down over the unconscious teen and pointed out the strange mark.

She had dismissed it as merely a bruise, but Danny had been struck with a shock of cold realization and had only barely restrained himself from grabbing his shoulder and alerting Jazz to his fear.

Now, without his nosey sister peering over his head, Danny reached up and rubbed his shoulder. Under his shirt he knew there was a mark almost identical to the one on Tucker's cheek. Except Tucker's was much larger, stretching down over his neck and past the collar of his shirt.

Danny didn't dare check how far down it actually went.

The ebony colour of the mark was much less obvious against Tucker's dark skin. On Danny's ghostly complexion, it was so painfully noticeable that he cringed every time he looked at himself in the mirror without his shirt on. But he had to look closer to see Tucker's. Once he'd recognized it for what it was though, he couldn't tear his eyes away.

'_That… __**thing**__ inside Tucker… Is that what's inside me?'_ A flash of memory reminded him of the emaciated creature he kept seeing in his dreams, the one that had stolen his face…Danny shuddered in repulsion. Subconsciously, his fingers slipped beneath his shirt to scratch at the spot on his shoulder, as though his nails alone could dig it out. _'But Tucker has only had that thing in him for a couple of days, and he's already been taken over. I've had it for... almost three weeks now.'_

He shivered.

"Danny! Mom and Dad's car is coming into the driveway!" Jazz's muted voice floated down over the stairs and Danny jumped to his feet.

He was about to grab Tucker and switch to his ghost form when Sam swivelled around in her chair and stopped him.

"Wait!"

Danny paused but bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet. "What?" he prompted. "C'mon Sam, I gotta get Tuck upstairs."

"Maybe not," Sliding out of her chair, she made her way past the lab table with its still burning Bunsen burner and mysterious bubbling liquid to reach Danny's side. "Look, Danny, you're parents are paranormal experts, maybe they can help Tucker."

He immediately dismissed the idea. "No, Sam. Mom and Dad won't know how to deal with this. Before I—before the Ghost Portal started working, they'd never even seen a ghost before. They haven't even caught one on their own yet."

"Okay," she conceded. "But that doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing. I mean, look at all the stuff they created." She gestured to the lab with its plethora of gadgetry and glassware. "How many times have one these inventions saved your life?" Danny had to confess that she did have a point.

"But—" He protested. Wasn't Sam the one who was always telling him not to trust adults? What was with this sudden change in attitude?

"But what? Danny, this isn't about you and your secret. This is about Tucker. And right now we need to think about him first. Do you know how to help him? Do I? Does Jazz? No, we don't. But your parents might. Come on, Danny, _think_. You're not being reasonable. You're being paranoid." Her eyes, sharp and demanding, bored into his own.

He opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again, licking his lips.

He didn't want to ask his parents for help. But why? They really _did _know more about ghosts than he did. Sure, he was a better hunter, and maybe he had more _practical_ knowledge, but no one Danny knew was smarter than his mother, and his father could take apart just about anything and put it back together—sometimes without even understanding what he was doing. His parents knew everything there was to know about the pure science behind ghosts and the supernatural. So why was he so resistant to Sam's idea?

He knew the true reason. Even if he didn't want to admit it.

Ever since Danny had gained ghost powers he'd learned to develop a healthy pathological fear of his parents. Healthy, because that it kept his limbs firmly attached to his body, thank you very much. Pathological, because there was nothing healthy about his simmering resentment and the way that he instinctively wanted to leave any room they were in.

Sam was right, though; this wasn't about him. This was about Tucker. And his parents were their best bet right now. He'd just have to suck it up.

He took a deep breath and looked towards the stairs. "Okay."

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Maddie was putting the groceries on the counter when her son's head became visible around the door between the lab and kitchen. He hugged the frame, standing awkwardly in the threshold.

"Uh… Mom?" His eyes flicked to her then to Jazz standing near the sink, hesitating.

Maddie turned, immediately sensing that something was amiss. "Honey? Is there something wrong?"

He stepped fully into the room and when Maddie was able to get a good look at his face, she realized that the dark bruise on his cheek from last night had completely healed. He also had on a long-sleeved sweater that was zipped up, covering him from wrist to jaw. The attire was much to warm for late April—especially for Danny, who never seemed to wear anything except jeans and a t-shirt. These things struck her as odd, but when Danny started speaking she focused back on his words.

"I… uh… I was wondering if you and Dad could help—" His hand gravitated to the back of his head, as it was prone to do when he was nervous.

"_Danny!_" Jazz's harsh chiding caught Maddie by surprise and her eyes cut to her eldest child.

"I don't know what else to do, Jazz!" Danny's voice rose as he said this, the hand on his head fell and he struck the doorframe with the side of a fist. Then, as soon as it came, the anger bled out of him and he was left looking weary. "Mom, Tucker's hurt."

Maddie could have reacted. She could have shouted out and demanded to know what was going on. Was there another ghost attack? How did Tucker get hurt? Why was Danny's friend even at their house when Danny was grounded?

But then she saw the looks her children were giving each other. Jazz's expression was cryptic as she stared at Danny, who stubbornly refused to meet her eyes. He shuffled with agitattion before tuning his head up to stare Maddie full on, hands buried deep into his pockets. Jazz might have been unreadable, but Danny had always been an open book to Maddie. He looked scared. Scared and confused. And then she knew what she had to do.

"Show me where he is." She said decisively, abandoning the groceries on the table.

"Jazz, get your father. He's upstairs." Head dipping in compliance, Jazz headed around the island countertop. Her eyes were locked with Danny's the entire way and when she passed in front of him, Maddie saw the spark of unspoken communication between them. Danny's mouthed words, carrying only a hint of breath—_'Trust me'—_did nothing for Maddie's anxiety. It seemed to work for Jazz though, who abruptly broke eye contact, nodding once before hurrying toward the stairs.

Maddie considered her son, weighing her choices. Scolding and grounding Danny didn't seem to be stopping him from getting into trouble. Openly asking questions didn't get her any answers. Waiting just seemed to be making things worse. Maybe she could try a different way.

They descended the stairs to the lab, Danny jogging ahead to meet Sam, who stood at the bottom, watching them come. Maddie wasn't all that surprised to see the girl. Where there was one of Danny's friends, the other was not often far behind.

"Sam!" He called. "He didn't wake up yet, did he?" He asked anxiously.

Sam shook her head and Maddie wondered at the phrasing of her son's question: they _didn't_ want Tucker to wake up?

Then she saw the boy lying in the middle of the room and she rushed to his side.

"What happened to him?" She demanded, immediately lowering herself to the ground by the boy. She raised his head, lying it on her knee as she examined him closer. Tucker was breathing, a little roughly, but steadily. He had a heartbeat and he seemed to be unhurt, except for a dark bruise across his right cheek. There were holes burnt into his shirt, but when Maddie looked for resulting marks on his skin she didn't find any.

"What happened?" She asked again, twisting around to face the teens when she received no immediate response. Danny was staring at her wide-eyed, and he looked to Sam. The girl was frowning, and they exchanged a meaningful glance before turning back. Danny's mouth opened—

A loud gasp near the stairs alerted her to the presence of her husband and daughter and she looked up.

Jack staggered in the doorway, his eyes wide as he stared at Tucker with such severe disbelief that it bordered on horror. Danny and Jazz looked at him worriedly, never having seen an expression like that cross the face of their normally easygoing father. But Maddie, who had loved and supported Jack through some of the darkest moments of his life, recognized the expression.

Ghosts, not of the literal kind, but the figurative, echoed in Jack's eyes as he stared at the black mark on Tucker's face.

"You've seen this before." Maddie stated. When he didn't respond, she urged him further. "Jack… Jack! Don't just stand there, tell me what you know!" She half rose when she said this, and ended up jolting Tucker sharply before she calmed back down. She placed a hand over his forehead. His hat had fallen off, and lay discarded on the ground. Now, Maddie removed the boy's glasses. When she reached up to put them on a table she felt a pair of hands gently pull them from her fingers. Looking up, she saw Danny's apprehensive eyes and gave him a reassuring smile.

Then she heard a low groan and Danny gasped and looked down. Maddie followed his gaze and saw that the sound was coming from Tucker. The boy made another sound in his throat, though this one sounded more like a growl; then he twitched.

It was as though someone had exploded a firecracker under Jack's feet. Defying his large girth, the man leapt forward, tearing the teen from Maddie's hands and nearly throwing him onto the dissection table. Tucker hissed, though his eyes didn't open and he jerked against the leather bands Jack tied to his wrists and ankles to hold him to the table.

"Jack!" Maddie exclaimed.

"Dad!" Danny yelled, rushing forward with Sam. Jazz stood back, her hands flew to cover her mouth.

"Danny, get back!" Jack ordered his son. But Danny paid him no heed, rushing to Tucker's side and placed a hand on his friend's arm.

The instant fingers brushed skin, Tucker's eyes snapped open. A feral yowl escaped bared molars and sinister black eyes fixed on startled blue. Tucker strained up against his restraints, teeth gnashing, muscles in his neck and arms bunching.

Danny saw it a split-second before it happened, but couldn't react fast enough: the strap on Tucker's right arm was loose—wild spasms made it come completely undone and then Tucker's hand shot out, fixing in Danny's collar and yanking him forward, forcing the half-ghost to bend double across his friends chest.

Someone was yelling, there was scrambling of people rushing, but Danny was deaf to everything except Tucker's hissed words.

"You think you've _won_, Halfling?" Tucker breathed, his lips so near, they brushed against Danny's ear. Someone was pulling at Danny, trying to tug him away. But Tucker's grip was a vice and it held strong, jerking Danny close. "You can try and cut us out, but we will keep coming again and _again_ and _again_… until we have devoured _everything_. This boy spilt blood on our sepulchre, his soul is _mine_." Danny gasped and tried to recoil when he felt something warm and wet touch his neck.

"And so is yours." Tucker grinned into Danny's jaw.

Large hands slammed down on Danny's shoulders, wrenching him back and tossing him almost violently across the room where he stumbled and hit his back against the wall. Tucker gave no resistance this time, letting Danny go easily and his head leaned back as he let out a bark of cold laughter that sent chilled spiders down Danny's spine. Tucker laughed, and kept laughing even as Jack pinned his wrist roughly to the table and pulled the strap so tight that it was bound to leave marks on the boy's arm.

His mother was at his side, touching his shoulder and asking if he was all right. Danny could only nod dumbly as he rubbed at the spot of wetness on his neck with the back of his hand, trying to erase the lingering, wormlike sensation Tucker's tongue had left. He stared at the monster in his best friend's body. It laughed, cackling with a manic expression that was all wrong on Tucker's face.

The sound of tinkling of glass crashing and scattering across the metal floor brought Danny out of his daze and he blinked up at his father who was upsetting the beakers and Petri dishes on the table in a clumsy search for something. Not finding it, he abandoned the tabletop and opened the drawers, pawing through the insides. Presently, his hand emerged, gripping a dark, amber tinted glass bottle. Spinning the top off, the liquid was poured into a vaporizer, which was promptly attached to a facemask. Jack wasted no time in slapping the slapdash device over Tucker's nose and mouth.

"A sedative?" Maddie drew away from Danny as she watched her husband fiddle with the vaporizer.

"Sevoflurane." He informed curtly out of the corner of his mouth.

Danny looked to Jazz for clarification but she looked as confused as he felt.

"General anaesthesia, Jack?" Maddie looked bemused. "What are you—"

"There's no time! We have to hurry." Jack looked up briefly at his wife when he said this. Under his hands, Tucker's struggles became sluggish, though he had begun to mutter darkly under his breath. "Maddie! I need you to help me. I … I can't use the ecto-scalpel like you." It was a testament to the seriousness of the situation that Jack was actually putting his pride aside and admitting his wife was better than him. This was not the point she had focused on though.

"You want to do surgery on him?" She gasped and behind her, Maddie thought she heard Danny choke.

Jack merely leaned over Tucker, bringing up a pair of scissors he sheared upward through Tucker's shirt, then flipped the ruined garment aside.

Everyone in the room seemed to inhale sharply at what was revealed.

What had looked like a simple bruise on Tucker's cheek darkened and curved over his throat; it burned the entire right side of his chest black and, even as they watched, seemed to be creeping over his left pectoral.

"It hasn't reached his heart yet. We still have time!" Jack insisted, holding out the scalpel to Maddie.

"My God… It's the Devil's Mark." She breathed putting a hand to her mouth. She had read about it, but had never expected to see one in real life.

"What? Wait—the Devil's Mark? What's that? What's going on?" Danny's agitated voice interrupted their exchange and he stepped around Maddie to place himself almost protectively over Tucker. "Someone tell me what's going on! Dad, you can't possibly want to cut Tucker with that—he's still awake!" As though to punctuate his words, Tucker chose that moment to let out a hissing snarl, though his eyes stayed shut.

Remembering how Tucker had lashed out at her son just moments ago, Maddie hastened to pull Danny away from the dissection table. But Danny was unmoved, spurning her attempts at moving him and yanking his arm from her grip.

"Dad—" he started

"Danny, not now." Jack ordered sternly.

Danny's eyes were opened wide, but he held his ground, stubbornly putting an arm over Tucker and blocking him from Jack. "No! I came to ask you to help, not dissect my friend!" At the end, the teen's voice was almost hysterical and Jack looked like he'd reached the end of his fuse. Maddie quickly intervened.

"Danny," She soothed, putting a hand on her son's shoulder. She didn't fail to notice how he repressed a flinch at the touch. "I need you to trust us right now. Tucker is in grave danger; we have to operate now otherwise he will not live. If that mark reaches his heart, he… He'll die, Danny."

Those words had a dramatic effect. Danny staggered back, as though struck. He stared disbelievingly up at Maddie.

She looked straight into his bright eyes. "And… Tucker should have been put completely under by the general anaesthetic." She watched as Jack took off the Sevoflurine mask and replaced it with one that provided oxygen. "Whatever is causing his body to move is _not_ Tucker."

Danny looked pained, "You… can take it out?" He croaked. "Cut it out? Are you _sure_?"

She gave him a sad smile, but nodded definitively. "I will. And I will explain everything you later but right now you need to let your father and I work. Don't worry about Tucker, the scalpel is designed only to cut ghosts."

"…Ghosts?" He echoed, a strange look on his face. "Will… it work on demons?"

"Demons?" Maddie's eyes sharpened. "What—how did—"

"Get back, Danny, I won't say it again. Maddie, take the Spectre Spectacles," If the situation hadn't been so dire, Maddie might have laughed at the name. Even Danny, she saw, had his eyebrows raised in dry humour. She took the pair of amber-tinted glasses from her husband, who gave her a brief rundown of their function: "You'll be able to see any foreign energy in the body with these. Ecto signatures should light up like a Christmas tree."

Maddie was suddenly aware of the empty space near her—Danny must have finally retreated to join Sam and Jazz. Grateful that he had finally decided to leave Tucker in her—and Jack's—capable hands, she turned the glasses over in her hands. The arms were thin, so were the two circular lenses. A small dial on the side proved to be an ingenious magnification device, but other than that, they looked like a set of ordinary, if dated, spectacles.

Shaking her head at her husband's quirkiness, she raised the goggles already on her eyes so that they rested on her forehead. Tentatively, she placed the Spectacles on her nose.

Almost immediately, a loud gasp escaped her mouth.

She could see it. She hadn't exactly doubted Jack's expertise—not much, anyway—but _this_… This erased all doubt.

Tucker's entire body was shrouded in a dull grey glow—no doubt proof of the foreign entity's possession. The grey turned to tepid ash before burning a sinister black around the Devil's Mark on Tuckers cheek and chest. But there was a certain spot, directly over the boy's sternum, which seemed to be the source. It pulsed, and as Maddie watched, it seemed to inch slightly to the left.

She swallowed, then steeled herself for what was to come.

"Scalpel." She said in her firmest voice, holding out her hand.

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_End Chapter 26_

_To Be Continued…_

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Hey now… Tucker? Dissection? This is worrisome ;P

To: **Dark Scrivener, aslan333, MidnightResWri, Rogue Alice, Phanfan925, dragondancer123, smallvillephantom14, Iaveina, Alkhemy Flynch, ginnywillalwaysrock, DPfruitloop **and **Senside**. You guys rock :D

Please review, I really, really wanna know what you guys think of this one (evil grin)... Remember, even if I don't necessarily write for reviews, I won't deny that they inspire my to write (coughUPDATEcough) faster! (What? Nooo, that's not extortion! Waddaya talking about? Think about it as... um... purposive encouragement? Yeah XD)

**Adio!**


	27. Slap a BandAid on It We're Okay

**Happy New Year's Eve!**

Hehe, figured I'd take advantage of my last chance to update in the year 2011 :P

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

Are you ready?

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_**The Soul Sepulchre**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 27 — **__Slap a Band-Aid on It; We're Okay_

It was the most nerve-wracking three hundred minutes of Danny's life. He had his back pressed hard against the far wall of the lab, unable to move closer for fear that his mother would see him with those Spectre Spectacles and unable to leave because his worry for Tucker kept his feet nailed to the ground.

But from where he stood he could clearly see the mask over Tucker's nose and mouth. It would fog with every puff of breath. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. It was inexplicably fixating and terrifying all at the same time.

Sam had stood by him, kindly keeping him company in the back of the lab, while Jazz had moved in for a closer look.

The ecto-scalpel had not worked.

First, when his mother had descended with the glowing green knife in her hand, Danny had started forward in alarm—secret be damned; he would not let his parents dissect his friend!—and it was only Sam's nails nearly drawing blood on his arm that made him stay where he was. And even then, it took a full five minutes of no screaming and no sign of pain from his friend before he could relax enough to fill his lungs properly.

Then his parents began to whisper and he'd tensed up all over again.

Apparently the scalpel was unable to cut whatever it was that was in Tucker's body. Maddie suggested a physical removal and then Jack had pulled out a different scalpel: one that was most definitely not human-proof.

This time it had taken both Sam and Jazz to stop Danny from leaping forward and inadvertently exposing himself to his parents.

"You have to trust Mom and Dad," Jazz murmured in his ear, pressing him back by his shoulder. "Think of Tucker, by the time we get him to a hospital, and explain what's going on to a doctor, he could be dead."

"Stop it, Danny." Sam's words were a lot less gentle as she forced him to look her square in the eye. "You aren't the hero here. You want to be useful? Sit down and stop trying to fight the only people who can _save_ Tucker's _life_."

And after that, Danny could only slump back against the wall. He waited, he watched: vibrating with suppressed energy, even as his legs felt like rubber.

He waited. He watched.

And it was a horrible thing to watch. From his position he wasn't able to see much but what he did see was more than enough to give him nightmares. His parents each snapped on a pair of surgical gloves before pulling out and washing a serious of metal instruments with painful meticulousness—_'Didn't they say there was no time to waste?'_— and then they'd arranged them, all gleaming, all sharp and pointed and—_'Oh God, they're going to cut Tucker open with those!'_—sterilized, neatly in a row on a tissue-covered pan.

Tucker didn't scream, he didn't even twitch when Maddie made the incision on his chest. He just lay there and the image reminded Danny sharply of the frog dissection Sam had protested against way back in the beginning of first term. That particular association made his stomach roll and, not expecting the violent reaction, he nearly had to bend double as he fought to prevent himself from retching.

His hand shook before his mouth. _'I'm getting a front row seat to what they would do if they ever caught me.' _Danny realized queasily, and then abruptly felt guilty for focusing on himself while his best friend was getting operated on.

His mother would reach in with the knife. Every now and again his father would extend a pair of tweezers holding a cotton ball and it would come back heavy and red with Tucker's blood. They had put retractors—'_Macabre, twisted hooks glinting bloody under fluorescent lights. They hold him open so they can reach in and cut.'_—in Tucker to keep the wound spread wide and then the difficult part had begun.

From what Jazz explained, it was like there was a pulsating, bubbling black ooze just under the skin that stretched over and stuck to the muscle. Its apparent size was the width of three fingers but there was no telling how deep into the tissue it had reached.

Maddie, intent on cutting the thing from Tucker's body, had lowered the scalpel to sheer off the edge of the bulging pustule.

No sooner had she touched the infection that a blood-curdling scream shook the room.

Maddie leapt back, her arm nearly knocking the tray of instruments flying. Rings of energy were sparking around Danny's midsection while Jazz and Sam shouted in shock.

Tucker's mouth was screaming out tortured cries in a voice that was not his own. Foul curses that neither Danny nor Sam had ever heard their easygoing friend say before flowed off his tongue like water. His back arched, his wrists and ankles strained against their bonds, fists clenched so tightly that his hands bled, the tendons on his neck bulged.

"_**Impudent mortals! Sons of vipers! Daughters of whores! We will devour you whole for your insolence. You will never destroy us. We breed in the darkness of your hearts; we thrive on your fear and delight in your suffering!"**_

Once again, Jack, proving that he had more than just fleeting knowledge of this phenomenon, didn't even hesitate as he grabbed a hypodermic needle filled with a deep burgundy substance.

"_**Your souls will fester in Hell. You will see your loved ones being raped every day while your flesh cracks and peels in boiling water! You—"**_ Black eyes stared at Jack balefully as he injected the substance in the Tucker's arm, but that didn't immediately stop the taunts.

"_**You cannot win, cannot hope to succeed. Your destruction will be engineered at your own hands. Your fight is futile… Nomen mihi Legio est… quia multi sumus…"**_ And then the voice speaking through Tucker's mouth thankfully ebbed away as his eyelids drooped and the tension in his body slackened.

Maddie, still recovering from the severe shock that nearly had her splitting Tucker open with the scalpel, had her hand on her chest as she gasped for breath. Then she saw the syringe in Jack's hand and let out a shaky laugh.

"Blood Blossom extract?" She affirmed.

Jack gave a self-important nod. "This should keep him—IT—out."

"Good…good…" She noticed that her hands were shaking and forced them still with an exertion of will. The event was put aside. Carelessly, Jack tossed the needle over his shoulder in the direction of the Fenton Garbage Destroyer. It missed, skittering over the top and landed with a musical _'tink'_ on the ground. It didn't shatter; instead, it rolled across the floor. Had Jack been paying attention, he would have seen Danny jump back from the needle in alarm, Jazz let out a startled 'eep!' and Sam quickly stride forward to snatch up the glass syringe before tossing it into the disposal. Jack missed all this, but Maddie saw the panicked expressions on the children's faces and filed the information away for a later time.

She turned back to the dissection table and they began again.

It seemed to take an interminable amount of time. Danny couldn't see much around his mother's back, but Jazz—in a fit of descriptive imagery—told him that the infection looked not dissimilar to someone having dripped a glob of molasses on the dark pink fleshy part under Tucker's skin then tried to spread it outward using a toothpick. This comment had Danny paling and put an end to his questioning for a while.

Maddie took painstaking care with her blade as she carved the parasite out of the teen. Sometimes, the foreign black substance would peel away easily from the muscle and tendon—these portions, Maddie could take the time to inject with a freezing solution before moving on—other times, it would splinter, leaving tiny black specks that Maddie was forced to leave behind. She had taken a few medical courses, but she was no doctor and was afraid to cut too closely.

Jazz left after the first hour. She was turning somewhat green after watching their parents work so Danny pushed her to go upstairs. When she refused, he asked her if she could do some research on the Devil's Mark and possessive spirits that weren't ghosts.

She looked at him oddly when he said the last part, but eventually relented and climbed the stairs out of the lab.

Danny though, hadn't moved. Even when Sam slowly let herself slide down the wall into a sitting position, he didn't join her. Roots had grown from his feet, planting them firmly to the ground.

'_**Easy, so easy, once they strap you down. Cut, cut, cut. The hooks hold you open—pulling, stretching your skin apart—won't let you heal. They'd do it to you too, if they got the chance. Saw you open like a piece of tender meat. Only you won't be asleep. And they won't be so gentle. Cut, cut, cut—oops! It slipped…'**_

Then finally—_finally_—Maddie backed away with something black and disgusting in her hand. Just the colour and the sliding, greasy texture were bad enough, but when the thing _squirmed_ as it was held by the tweezers, Danny felt another, strong attack of revulsion hit him and he gagged into a fist. Maddie dropped the thing in a small containment tube, which Jack promptly sealed. Danny wished they'd just fried the thing into non-existence.

Maddie, exhausted, had handed the reigns over to Jack, who stitched Tucker up like a professional. His large hands might not have been useful during the excision, but many years of needlepoint had taught him valuable sewing skills.

'_**Slap a Band-Aid on it; we're okay… or are we?'**_

The moment his mother took off the Spectre Spectacles, Danny was rushing over to examine his best friend. A sheen of sweat coated Tucker's body and the bandage his parents had placed over the centre of his chest stuck out as a cruel reminder of what he'd suffered. But his face was completely relaxed and his breathing was deep and unencumbered—he could have been asleep. Without further ado, Danny reached down to undo the straps on his friend's arms, but his mother's hands blocked his way.

Danny looked up at her in confusion.

"I'm sorry sweetie, but we can't let Tucker out of the restraints until we're absolutely sure it's just Tucker in there." She said wearily.

"Can't you check with the Spectre Spectacles?" Danny asked, confused. Anxiety made his shoulders and chest tight. His parents had cut it out—they'd cut it out. Tucker had to be okay now.

Maddie nodded. "I did. But we have to be sure, okay? I'm sorry, but in case your father or I made a mistake, I don't want to put any of you kids in trouble."

It was good, solid reasoning, except it didn't fit with what Danny wanted. _'He's okay now. He has to be.'_ His brow furrowed and a hand ran through his hair in agitation.

"Fine…" He relented. "But can I sleep down here tonight?" A quick glance at the clock proved it to be past midnight.

Maddie hesitated. "I… I don't think so. It's kind of cold down here."

"I can handle it." He assured her. And it wasn't a lie. Danny hadn't even realized the lab was cold—to him, it felt comfortable, maybe even a little warm.

"You have school tomorrow."

"I can sleep pretty much anywhere without much trouble, Mom. You know that."

"If there're any problems when Tucker wakes up—"

"I'll call you right away. Besides, isn't it better to have someone nearby for when he does wake up? Tucker hates hospitals; he'll panic if he wakes up alone and strapped down to a table."

She still looked uncertain.

"Let him do it, Mads. I wanna get some fudge then go to sleep." Jack gave a huge yawn. Though his words were light, Danny could still see the seriousness edging his father's eyes: a hard, steely glint. It was an uncommon look on the man's face and it made Danny uneasy.

His mother was still considering him. "…Okay." She accepted at length, "but don't touch anything, and come get us when Tucker wakes up. Don't unstrap him, no matter what he looks like or says." Maddie warned.

"Thanks, Mom." Danny smiled gratefully watching her follow his father up the stairs.

Once his parents were gone, he let out a tiny breath of relief, tension he hadn't known he'd been harbouring flowing out of him with their departure. Then he looked over at Sam, who had been unusually quiet. With all the excitement over Tucker's possession, he had nearly forgotten that Sam, too, had been a prisoner of Legion. His smile fell as he actually took the time to _look_ at Sam. She was clearly exhausted: the area under her eyes was puffy and her eyelids drooped even as she focused on him. Everyone else had gotten up and left, but she was still seated against the wall, legs loosely folded and looking very much like she had no intention of moving.

"Just get me a blanket." She said gruffly, blatantly ignoring the concern in his eyes. "I'm staying with you until Tucker wakes up."

"Oh no," A mischievous grin quirked the corner of his lips and he strode over to Sam, extending a hand for her to grab. She let out a startled yelp when, instead of simply pulling her to her feet, he swept his other arm under her knees and lifted her bodily.

"I'm going ghost!" A thrill ran through him as he said these words. It felt _good _to utter his familiar battle cry; it seemed like forever since he'd used it.

A flash of light and twin rings of frigid energy shifted him into his alter ego; then he was flying straight up through the ceiling.

Arriving in his room, he playfully dropped Sam onto his bed.

"Oomph!" She glared at him as she toppled into his messy pile of blankets and pillows.

"You can have my bed, just don't go drooling on my pillows or anything." He said cheekily and was promptly nailed in the face with a pillow.

Picking it up, he snapped the ends of the pillowcase outward and grinned at Sam as he sank down through the ground.

"Thanks!"

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Danny didn't know how late it was when Tucker finally woke up. All he knew was that one moment he'd been staring confusedly at the ceiling of his parent's lab wondering what had woken him up and the next he'd heard a low groan that had him lurching to his feet before he'd even pulled the blankets away from his legs.

For the second time in as many nights, his typical clumsiness kicked in and his feet tangled, making him flop back onto the ground in a painful heap. He held his breath as he lay there. Now he was wondering if he'd even really heard the groan or if it'd been his imagination.

" 'MfinemommyPDAhasanalarm…"

The blanket slipped right through Danny's legs as he pushed off the floor and latched both hands onto the edge of the dissection table.

"Tucker! Tuck! Is that you?"

"Urgh… Danny. Coudja turn off your eyes, they're giving me a headache….um…Why can't I move?" Tucker blinked—blinked hazel eyes.

"Tuck!" Danny's smile split his face as he passed a hand over the straps holding Tucker's arms and legs down to the table, turning them intangible with practiced ease. When Tucker sat up, rubbing his wrists, he stared at Danny with a look of bafflement that was so familiar it nearly had him breaking down into unmanly tears. As it was, he threw his arms around Tucker and proceeded to hug the breath out of the other teen until he made a weak, breathless protest.

"Dude, I love you too, but couldj'ou ease up? I'm feeling a little rough."

"Oh! Yeah! Yeah, right…" Danny immediately let go, scratching behind his ear with a sheepish look that Tucker couldn't see in the unlit room.

"So, what's with the sap all of a sudden? And why's it so dark in here?"

"That's right, the lights!" Danny had forgotten that his friend didn't have ghostly vision and jogged over to flick on the lights in the lab. For half a minute the boys squinted and blinked as bright fluorescent lights flooded the room. Noticing that Tucker's gaze seemed owlish and unfocused, Danny fished his friend's glasses out of his pocket and handed them over. Tucker hooked them over his ears and pushed the half-moon lenses up his nose before raising his eyebrows quizzically.

"Uh, Danny? Why're we in your parent's lab?" Then Tucker saw exactly what he'd been strapped down to and his eyes widened, breath quickening. "_And why was I sleeping on the dissection table?_"

"Tucker!" Danny grabbed the other teen's shoulders and steadied him, not letting him jump off the table. "Relax! Just relax; you're fine. Breathe. You shouldn't move too much. It's okay!" He soothed, trying his best to be calming. But Tucker was already blanching, lurching forward as he grabbed his mouth and stomach.

"I… I don't feel so…"

Danny belted for the closet, reaching right through the door for the pail. Skidding as he raced back, he practically shoved the bucket at Tucker who immediately proceeded to noisily empty the contents of his stomach. Cringing, Danny made to rub his back, but Tucker lurched away from the touch, gagging even worse. Drawing back, Danny could only watch sympathetically, his arms half-raised in helpless concern. But when a second bought of nausea hit Tucker, causing him to nearly drop the pail, the hybrid figured out his usefulness. He grabbed the bucket, holding it for Tucker, and did his best not to look or inhale too deeply.

Eventually, Tucker's hacking turned dry and his breathing evened out, he tossed his head back from the pail, covering his nose and mouth with his hands.

"You okay?" Danny ventured carefully.

"Yeah… yeah, just get it away." Tucker answered, a distressed tone in his voice. He coughed. "Get it away, I can't—"

And Danny understood, turning and bounded up the stairs even as he wondered what he was going to do with the bucket of sick.

A few minutes later, Danny returned to find Tucker gargling vigorously at the lab's sink; and again, the half-ghost ran upstairs—this time for toothpaste, a toothbrush and a glass of water.

It took a while, but Tucker finally shut off the sink and took a grateful gulp from the glass that Danny handed him.

"Thanks… man that was rank…" Tucker sighed, putting the empty glass on the tabletop. He pushed away from the counter and nearly toppled over.

"Hey! Hey, take it easy!" Danny caught Tucker and steadied him with one hand tossed over his shoulder.

"Yeah… world's still a little fuzzy, you know?" Tucker laughed.

"Yeah, I know." Danny grinned. "How'd you even make it over to the sink in the first place?"

Tucker shot him an incredulous look. "Are you kidding? You remember how upchuck tastes? I had motivation."

"And now, of course, you don't need any with me here to be your pack mule." Danny joked with a roll of his eyes.

"That's... right, man. That insurance I took out on being a superhero's best friend came with benefits, y'know." Tucker huffed as he slumped gratefully onto the floor, leaning back against the cool metal wall. Danny offered him his pillow, but Tucker waved it away.

Danny held the pillow between his hands, a conflicted expression on his face.

"Tuck, I'm—"

"Don't, Danny." Tucker shook his head, dismissing Danny's attempts at an apology.

Danny nodded and plunked down next to his friend, folding his legs and hugging the pillow close as he rested his chin on top of it. A few minutes passed in silence, during which Tucker rested and Danny stared at him in concern. At length, Tucker's eyes opened, rolling upward in good-humour before landing on blue eyes that were still watching him.

"I'm serious." Tucker insisted. But Danny's expression didn't even twitch, and Tucker's gaze fell to the pillow his friend was curled around, as though contemplating grabbing it and smacking some sense into the half-ghost. He abandoned the idea though: too much effort.

Instead, he changed the topic, "Hey, what didj'ou do with that bucket, anyway?"

"Huh?" Danny looked confused for a moment before his expression lifted in understanding. "Oh! The pail…. Hmm…. Yeah…"

Tucker quirked an eyebrow at Danny's familiar lopsided grin. "What? You fry into non-existence or something?"

"Well, let's just say we're going to have to get a new pail and leave it at that." Danny hedged with a shake of his head.

"Huh…" Tucker eyed the other teen with an amused smile. "And that toothbrush you gave me? Lemme guess, it's Jazz's?"

"Oh, that?" Danny looked up at the toothbrush handle that was just poking out over the counter near the sink. "Naw… that's mine… Though, I guess you can have it now."

"Oh, that's generous." Tucker huffed sarcastically. Glancing sideways at each other, and they shared a short laugh. Too quickly though, their half-hearted chuckling died away and a lengthy silence fell as both boys mulled over their own thoughts.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Huh?" Tucker's titled his head to look at Danny, thrown by the sudden question.

"From before you woke up in the lab." Danny clarified as he picked at loose threads along the edge of the pillow. "What's the last thing you remember before getting knocked out?" Nervous eyes of icy blue flicked upward, fell, then determinedly drew back up to fix steadily on Tucker.

"Oh," Tucker squinted as he recalled the memory. "Well…I remember Sam wanting us to go catch the ghost in the Museum—which I was totally against by the way." Danny merely nodded, encouraging him to continue.

"And then we went into that room you and the ghost destroyed. There was a freaky tapestry, and some metal manhole thing on the ground. And then… and then…" Tucker's voice suddenly cut off, his eyes widening behind his glasses.

"Tucker?" Danny 's head shot up and he dropped the pillow. He slid over to kneel before the other boy and grabbed his shoulders. "Tucker!" To his alarm, Tucker had begun to shake under his hands.

"Oh… oh, God, Danny, that _thing_. It was horrible!" Tucker's back bowed as he fisted both hands in the hair around his temples, as though trying to tear the memory right out of his head. "It… God… it was huge. And it was all black; it looked like it was made up of smoke that kept moving and curling. It was hard to look at. And it's _teeth_. Its teeth were—" The teen abruptly cut himself off, then shook his head and began again.

"It said that we would make a good meal… that it would—to our… our s-souls… And it looked at us with these awful eyes. It felt—I was burning. But I was so cold too… And there was this tugging from inside—inside me. Then I was falling and I couldn't feel my feet. I couldn't move my arms. It—it snapped out its head. It's _teeth_… Th-they were… It moved so _fast_." Danny was still holding onto his friend, offering what comfort he could, but Tucker's words had caused Danny's own memories to surface and the half-ghost stiffened in horror, his eyes glued to a point somewhere above Tucker's head.

"I don't know what happened." Tucker shook his head in fervent denial. "One minute I was drowning then I was surrounded by all these screaming people. They, they were—moaning, and crying and reaching. Th-they kept grabbing at me, pulling, _touching_. They clawed at my hands, my face. They wouldn't get _away!_ So many, they pulled me down, I couldn't escape. I couldn't move, but my body moved for me. I've never… Nothing like that has ever… Not even when you overshadowed me."

Danny recoiled as though Tucker had physically pushed him back. The comparison of the demon's possession to his ghostly overshadowing was probably unintentional but it hurt nonetheless. Without realizing it, he let go of Tucker's shoulders and drew back into himself. He'd never considered it before, but trapping someone in their own body as he took the reigns was horribly similar to what these… _parasites_ were doing.

He'd never even considered it to be wrong. What did that make him?

"I could see through my eyes, but it was like I was just a bystander." Tucker continued speaking and Danny, throwing away his thoughts, latched onto the words. "It was like one long, awful dream but I wouldn't wake up. Like the Fright Knight except worse. I…" Tucker's eyes widened and snapped to Danny. "All those things. I said so many horrible things—"

Danny immediately shook his head, "No Tuck, it wasn't you." He consoled.

"But I said them! And I attacked you. It was so strong. Single-minded. I never…" Then his eyes flew open. "SAM! Danny, Sam was there, and Jazz, are they—!"

"Shh, Tucker," Danny put a finger to his lips, hushing Tucker. "They're fine. Jazz got out before anything could happen to her. And Sam woke up before you. She wasn't hurt." It seemed to take a while before this information processed in Tucker's brain and Danny had to repeat it before comprehension, then relief, crossed Tucker's face.

"That's good. Sam's okay…" Tucker said to his hands. "…Y'know, I've never really thought about it before…"

"About what?" Danny asked.

"Hate." Tucker said frankly. "I never realized that…" A hollow look that Danny knew too well but never wanted to see on his friend's face, adorned Tucker's features. "I've never felt hate before, y'know? I thought I had. When I made that wish with Desiree to have your powers they made me feel so angry. And I know I've said that I hate Dash… but… nothing like _this…_ I… I can't explain." He shook his head helplessly, unaware of the all too empathetic look on Danny's face.

"Look Tuck, it doesn't matter anymore. There was this thing inside you that was controlling you, but Mom and Dad cut it out."

"Cut it out?" Tucker echoed.

Danny nodded, "They excised it." He looked significantly at Tucker's chest.

Realizing, perhaps for the first time, the significance of his shirtlessness, Tucker looked himself over. The first thing he noticed was the white bandage over his sternum, which ached dully. Then he saw the black stain crawling up his collarbone and past his range of vision. Shocked, he leaned around Danny to check his reflection in the shiny surface of the dissection table and gasped as he saw the black Devil's Mark stretching across his cheek.

"It's not permanent," Danny hurried to say. "Mom and Dad took out the thing that was causing it and got rid of it. They said it should fade in a day or so. And they gave you some kind of sedative to knock you out. That's probably what made you sick before…" He mused.

Tucker still stared, brushing a hand over his blackened cheek. It repulsed him. But he couldn't help but be amazed at how the area felt no different than his own skin. If it weren't for the darkened pigment, Tucker would've never thought there was anything wrong. Then Danny's words caught up to him and he paused.

"Your parents got rid of the ghost possessing me?"

Danny cast a wary glance at the freezer where his parents had stashed the remains of the parasite. But that wasn't necessary for Tucker to know. "It's gone, Tuck."

Tucker let out a breath of air. "Man, Danny, your parents really don't get enough credit." The attempted humour fell flat as his voice was much too shaky to sustain it.

"Yeah," Danny answered with a soft smile. "They have their moments."

Tucker was quiet. He looked thoughtful and Danny didn't much feel like prying.

"Hey Danny?"

"Yeah?"

"I… that thing in me. It made me feel things." Tucker fisted a hand over his heart. "Like… I was always hungry, to the point of pain. I was starving. Always. It was something that drove me—it—I couldn't think about anything else except this hunger. When I looked at Ja—at someone, all I could think of was how… How I could…" Danny raised his hand, not needing his friend to continue, but Tucker shook his head, stalling Danny's words as he kept speaking. "And it would be so easy too. A quick swipe, some blood and they'd be dead. Gone. A sack of flesh, bone and blood. So easy to just tear it open…"

"Tucker…" Danny frowned, repulsed by his friend's morbid words.

"And then I saw you." Hazel eyes snapped to Danny, staring at him as though hypnotized. "I'd never seen anything so… magnetic. Everything else faded away and I knew that you would be able to stop that awful hunger. That's why I leapt at you. Twice. I couldn't stop myself, I—"

"Stop it, Tucker!" Danny interrupted angrily and Tucker drew back with a startled look. "Stop referring to yourself as though _you _were the one doing those things. You know very well that possession, overshadowing, or whatever, takes over the host's will completely. You had no control. Everything you felt was because of that _thing_ in you. It wasn't you."

"But it felt different than overshadowing," Tucker protested, gesturing widely with one hand. "I could feel this ghost's emotions as though they were my own. That's not like when you—"

"Tucker, do you want to eat me now?" Danny interrupted bluntly and was rewarded when real emotion finally broke through the strange mood Tucker had plunged into.

"What? Ew! No! That's gross, man." Tucker made a disgusted face.

"Good, then let's just forget about it, okay?" Danny looked away and for a while both boys toyed with their fingers, not really thinking about anything.

"Oh yeah," Danny said, remembering something. Digging a hand into his pocket, he felt his fingers curl around what he was looking for. He flinched back though, when what felt like an electric current passed between the object and his fingers. Rubbing away the effects of the static electricity, he drew out Tucker's PDA, battered, but still functional. "Here you go," he slapped it into Tucker's palm. "Valerie picked it up outside the museum, thought you might like it back."

Tucker took the PDA gratefully, cradling it in his hands. "Thanks. Valerie, huh?... I wonder how it got outside the museum."

All Danny could offer in answer was a shrug and Tucker's back bowed as he fiddled with the handheld device.

"You know… If you're still feeling guilty then you can always make the next few payments for me…" Tucker suggested slyly.

Danny slanted a wry glance at him, not even bothering to answer and Tucker sighed, leaning back against the wall.

"Eh, it was worth a try." He shrugged. When Danny didn't respond, silence fell once again in the room.

"So… Sam's really okay?" Tucker asked at length.

"Yeah," A true smile spread across Danny's face. "She's the one who brained you with my Math book earlier."

"Oh…" Tucker put a hand to the back of his head, prodding gingerly at the still-tender spot. "Man, she really did a number on me."

Danny couldn't help it; he sniggered. After realizing his own unintentional pun, Tucker chuckled, which set Danny off again. Soon, both boys were clutching their sides as they dissolved into peals of uncontrollable laughter.

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_End Chapter 27_

_To Be Continued…_

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Figured you guys were due a non-cliffhanger ending, especially after the last one :P

Last chapter got a couple of anonymous reviews so I thought I just want to take a few lines to respond to your guys.

**MsFrizzle**: Oh your penname brings back so many memories! I loved the magic schoolbus back in the day :3 At any rate, I'm glad you're enjoying the story, including it's plot and characterizations :) I do agree that, for the fight scene in the museum I skimped a bit on the details. Part of it was definitely that I wanted the scene to have a quick-paced, action-packed 'flow'; but it might also have been my author-blindness XD. Sometimes when I'm proof-reading, I read what I 'think' I've written or I subconsciously fill in details that are obvious to me, the author, but not to the reader… But nonetheless, I hope you still were able to picture the scene as it played out. Anyway! Thanks for reviewing and also for returning to this story… Oh yeah! And the Tucker Electronics thing is awesome, innit? :D

**A Spirit of the Stars**: Haha, yeah, I've been on an updating spree lately. Here's hoping it will last! :D I'm glad you're enjoying the story and I hope you liked the chapter! Thanks for the review! :)

Ok wow… You guys are absolutely awesome at this 'purposive encouragement' business! Your response to the last chapter was above and beyond. Seriously, thank you :). To: **Phantom Lightning, Princess of Rose, aslan333, smallvillephantom14, Yugirose, pearl84, Senside, seantriana, Rogue Alice, Honeygirl30, DPfruitloop, DeliciousKrabKakes, MsFrizzle, Magic Cabbage, A Spirit of the Stars,** **MidnightResWri **and **Phanfan925.**

Please Review! And have a wonderful New Year!

**Adio!**


	28. Backwash

**Hiya!**

OVER 300 REVIEWS? WOOHOO! Never thought this fic would get so many reviews! Thank you guys so much!

Chhh…. This chapter was a struggle to get started on but once I did it just kept going. I like to keep my chapters around 5-6k so I had to cut it (and even then it still ran way over, heh). Hopefully the ending won't be too abrupt…

**Disclaimer:** Disclaimed.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulchre**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 28 — **Backwash_

_He awoke in darkness. Blinking owlishly, he waited for his eyes to adjust. But the blackness, if anything, only deepened. It pressed in on his eyes like an opaque film. The utter lack of light confused his eyes and he squinted, trying to focus and failing._

_He was lying on his side, knees drawn half-way to his chest—as though he'd been curled around something in his sleep. Yet there was nothing but empty space around him. Emptiness… _

_He looked around, turning his head up blindly. His eyes kept conjuring little spots of dull light in his periphery vision, but he chased them down only to have them disappear, then reappear again in the corner of his eye._

_Exhaling, he rolled over and planted his hands flat on either side of his chest. He pushed, and his intention was to rise smoothly to his feet. He rocked back on his heels and took his hands off the ground, but his wrists abruptly stopped short. He pitched forward, falling onto his hands and knees._

_What was this? He touched his wrists, and that was when he noticed the shackles. Around his wrists was a pair of heavy, wide cuffs that he could feel but not see. As he mapped the restraints with his fingertips, he touched upon a chain of thick links stretching outward. He tugged his right hand backward, once, twice, then joined his hands and threw his weight backward._

_Nothing. The chain didn't give an inch._

_He then decided to try crawling forward—maybe if he could find out what the chains were attached too—_

_His movement was suddenly arrested. His ankles were stuck. And that was when he realized it wasn't just his hands that were tied down._

_His breath was speeding up. He tried to turn, fingers reaching blindly to grasp—touch, feel, anything!— the restraints around his ankles, but his wrists stopped short. Reflexively, he tried to bring his feet under him, but the chains kept them just a little too far._

_The darkness was beginning to smother him. Wide-eyed, he tried to search for something—a hint of light? His ears were pricked—a sound?_

_His eye darted around, chasing phantom glimmers of light that vanished as he turned toward them._

_Nothing. All around, there was nothing. Nothing was what he could see, nothing at all. Even his own body, he couldn't see. And he felt strangely disjointed from himself: like he was a pair of eyes and nothing else._

_He couldn't even tell what he was kneeling on. As far as he could tell there was no floor, just a pit of darkness. He couldn't feel it under his hands either—What was this place? What was holding him up? He could fall through it any second, it seemed. And his limbs froze under him at that thought._

_He was acutely aware of the cuffs encircling his wrists. They were heavy and made his arms sag. What was this? Where was he? The nothingness seemed never ending, but it couldn't be. Maybe the walls weren't all that far away, if he could just reach out and touch something, anything… _

_A gasp left his mouth and he jerked his head around._

"_Who's there?" He called and his voice shocked him with its loudness._

_No answer._

_But he'd seen—! He was sure he'd seen… seen something._

"_Is anyone there?" He threw the question to the endless abyss and for a long moment he waited, tense, jaw clenched, eyes rabbit-like and dilated. Then—_

"_Hey!" He spun, half-rising. The chains aborted the movement before it had even begun, yanking him back to the ground. "Hey!" He yelled again. He was sure he'd seen something this time. "Who's out there? C'mon, show yourself! Don't hide in the shadows, face me straight on!"_

_As the words left his mouth he almost regretted them. Who knew what he was calling anyway? What if it wasn't a friend, what if it was—_

_There! A glimpse of yellow! Eyes! He was sure he'd seen them this time! But then, as he was about to shout out in triumph, his voice caught and his head jolted to around._

_Another set of eyes… he'd seen… But that meant…_

"_What—? Who are you? How many of you are there?" He was shouting out recklessly now, but he didn't care. He could feel them everywhere—eyes, eyes more eyes!—and they were coming closer. The darkness was closing in. But it wasn't empty darkness. No, they were using the shadows to hide their forms. He wanted to recoil, he wanted to run, or fight—Something! But the shackles kept him awkwardly on his knees. If he could just stand!_

_He struggled in vain, yanking and straining against the manacles. They were coming closer—he could feel them. They would converge on him. No! He didn't want them to—!_

"_Get away!" But it was too late. Bound hand and foot, he couldn't even raise his arms over his head, and he watched in horror as they came, piling on one another, rising above his prone form. They curved over him, leering with insidious sickly yellow eyes. And then, like a giant mouth descending, they plunged._

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Danny came awake gasping and flailing. It took him some time to realize that it wasn't Legion's dead army he was fighting, it was just thin air. His hands stilled, though his chest still heaved with the force of his breathing. For a minute—and then two minutes—he didn't move, didn't do anything. He simply sat and let his brain catch up to his body. A body that was _trembling_, of all things. Worse: he didn't know if it was adrenaline he was shaking from…or fear.

"Urgh…" Finally, the dream was slipping back into surreal fog and reality gaining clarity. Danny berated himself for just losing a perfectly good night's rest due to post-battle jitters. This hadn't happened to him since… since Dan.

"Right." He grumbled, shoving a hand through his hair. Well, that was done. No more sleep for him.

Glancing around, he saw that Tucker was still passed out near the wall. Danny wasn't sure when they'd both dozed off, but judging from their awkward, half sitting positions on the floor of his parents' lab, it hadn't been planned.

Speaking of his parents… it was probably just as well that Tucker was still asleep. Danny still had to wake them up—and explain why he hadn't bothered to call them last night when Tucker had regained consciousness. Using one hand for balance, he brought his legs under him and pushed himself to his feet. There was a flash—brief, but strong—of relief as he made it to a standing position without being yanked back down.

Fitfully, he brushed at his wrists, trying to get rid of the lingering impression of heavy cuffs surrounding them.

Climbing the stairs, he left the lab—and blinked in the sudden sunlight. Apparently it wasn't as early as he'd thought; almost no light from the rising sun had filtered into the lab, which must have given him that impression of nighttime. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was almost 7. Way too early—

Wait, it was Monday, wasn't it?

Danny groaned, pressing the heel of one palm into the hollow of his eye. He did _not_ want to deal with school. Everyone was bound to be gossiping about his suspension, Dash would probably be on a warpath looking for revenge and his teachers… Even in his own mind he didn't want to go near that one. Lancer had _seen_. The three scratches stretching across his neck could not by any stretch of the imagination have been accidentally inflicted. Now, those wounds quite literally didn't exist anymore. Danny had no idea what he was going to do about that. Maybe he'd be lucky and Mr. Lancer would just forget?

Using the railing, Danny lugged himself up the stairs and moved down the hallway until he was standing before his parents' room, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. It'd been a long time since he'd gone into their room while they were still sleeping, he couldn't exactly remember the last time, but it'd certainly been before the accident. Now, as he pressed the door open, leaning on it as he poked his head nervously around the corner, he felt oddly young.

Padding up to his mother's side of the bed, he called her quietly. Then, when she didn't respond, he called her again, louder.

"Hmmm…? Danny?" Maddie's eyes slid open, then squinted as she looked at him in confusion. "What…?"

"Tucker's awake." He intoned quietly.

"What?" She repeated, still sleep-addled. "Tucker…?"

"You told me to get you when he woke up… " Danny explained, and his anxiousness showed as he began speaking faster and gesturing in the air. "He woke up a while ago but he wasn't feeling well so I had to let him out of the restraints—"

"You _what_?" Maddie was now much more awake, and pushed herself up to a sitting position. "You let him out? Danny I specifically told you—"

"He was sick Mom; he had to throw up. I didn't have a choice." Danny defended himself, still keeping his voice low, but firm. "Besides, his eyes are back to normal and he was acting fine too. Tucker hates hospitals, I couldn't just leave him strapped to the table all night, he would've panicked."

"Danny, that's something you should have let me or your father decide." Maddie scolded. "Jack. Jack!" She shook her husband sharply.

Oblivious to the conversation on the other side of the bed, Jack had been busy sawing the same piece of wood that kept the rest of the family awake on long road trips. When Maddie shook him though, he came awake with a loud snort.

"Huh? What? Mads? Something wrong?"

"Tucker woke up, Jack, we should go check on him." Maddie informed him without delay, already swinging her legs over the bed and rising to her feet. Danny backed up to give his mother space as she moved to her dresser, pulling her familiar jumpsuit from the top drawer.

"What?" Jack sat up abruptly, nightcap falling askew. "He's awake?" It was then that Jack noticed Danny. "Danny! How long has he been up? Did he do anything?"

The sight of his father sleeping in an orange jumpsuit with a printed nightgown tossed over it barely made Danny blink. The youngest Fenton shook his head. "His eyes were back to normal. He got sick though. I had to let him out of the restraints." He made sure to keep those sentences separate, but close enough that his parents would draw the obvious conclusion. He wasn't lying. Not _exactly_.

Jack was hardly listening. As soon as the word 'normal' had passed Danny's lips, Jack had jumped out of bed and charged to the adjoining master bathroom, slamming the door closed behind him. Maddie, her clothes bundled in her hands, sent the closed door a little sigh before turning back to Danny.

"We'll meet you downstairs in a bit. Why don't you go make sure Jazz and Sam are up and get ready for school? Don't go back down into the lab until your father and I are there." She warned. "You shouldn't have released him, Danny."

"But—"

"I understand why you did it, but the moment Tucker started to wake up you should've came and got your father and me. What if Tucker had attacked you?"

"His eyes were back to normal…" Danny protested.

"But that might've been a trick." Maddie refuted calmly. "You should know that, Danny, after all that your father and I have taught you about the paranormal." She didn't raise her voice, didn't get angry. Her tone was low, reasonable and carried such heavy disappointment that Danny cringed. He couldn't even muster any teenage indignation to use against such a tactic. Scuffing his socked toes against the carpet, Danny looked down and avoided his mother's criticising gaze.

Perhaps interpreting his awkward silence as guilt, Maddie's eyes softened and she smiled, putting a hand on her son's shoulder and squeezing it comfortingly. "It's okay Danny, I think I understand. You were attacked by ghosts two times in just the past month; and then I see you drawing a map of the Ghost Zone and studying the ghost weapons…"

Danny stiffened under her touch, his eyes fixing on a small spot of black fuzz on the carpet as he staunchly refused to look up.

"You're trying to prove yourself, aren't you? Trying to prove that you can handle yourself against the ghosts?" Maddie asked quietly.

And Danny's head shot up. He looked at her in surprise and his mouth opened as though to reply. But Maddie shook her head.

"No, I… I understand your frustration. I've been thinking about it for a while; wondering, wondering why you seem so distant, why your grades are erratic, why you seem to hate ghost hunting one second and then you're collecting weaponry the next… But Danny, I don't want you to feel like you're being forced into something you don't want to do. Ever since you've been young, you've wanted to be an astronaut. You never took to ghost fighting—and I want you to know _that's okay_. You don't need to feel like you need to prove something. There's nothing to prove. If you don't want to fight ghosts then you don't have to. It's as simple as that."

There was something deeply frightening about being told that he didn't need to fight ghosts. It was a comment that stuck in his brain—wiggled about and tried to undo threads of conviction that he'd spent so much time tightly tuning—and so he cut it out. Forcefully, he excised it, threw it into a pit in his mind where it could simmer with all his other self-doubts. Seeing his mother was looking at him expectantly, he licked his lips, searching for at least one of the thoughts racing through his brain that would be safe to say to his mother.

"But Dad—…" He started and then trailed off.

Maddie laughed. "Your father is very zealous about his work, Danny; it's difficult for him not to try and impose ghost hunting even on the people walking down the street. But Danny…" Here she grew serious and gazed steadily into Danny's eyes. "He only pushes so hard because he worries about you. So do I."

"Oh… and you don't worry about Jazz, do you?" Danny murmured, and his tone held a tang of bitterness.

"Can you blame us for worrying about you more?" Maddie asked, and her sincerity threw Danny, who glanced at her with wide eyes. "I _know_ you're brilliant, Danny. You can do anything you want."

He flushed, fidgeting uncomfortably "_Mom_…" he demurred.

She held up a hand. "Let me finish. You are brilliant, Danny. But what I don't understand is how _you_ don't seem to see this. You act like school is not important; you come home late and when I reprimand you, you barely even seem to be hearing me. You're being bullied and you never even bothered to tell anyone about it. I know that no one asked you for your side of the story in that fight between you and Dash, but Danny, _you never even tried to defend yourself_."

Danny was beyond words now. He could hardly identify the bittersweet knot of emotions that made his chest hurt and jaw clench. All he could do was stand there and let his mother's words wash over him.

"Sometimes… sometimes I wonder if you've stopped caring." Maddie sounded distressed and her hand fell from Danny's shoulder. "The only emotion I seem to be able to get from you these days is anger. Your father thinks it's a part of being a teenager, but I don't think it's part of _you_. Danny… I haven't heard you talk about being an astronaut for a long time. Do you still want to be one? What are… do you think about your future? What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Danny opened his mouth, prepared to fire off his usual 'Of course I want to be an astronaut!' but his voice stuck and he had to close his mouth and swallow. He couldn't make himself say it when he wasn't even sure about it anymore. It was such an unrealistic goal. How could he become an astronaut with his grades? And besides, who would look after Amity Park if he was gone? His mother was right about one thing: he hadn't thought about his future for a long while.

Seeing his mental struggle clearly through his conflicted eyes, Maddie sighed. "Danny, you need to start thinking about these things. And I mean seriously thinking. I'm worried that… that you're becoming depressed—"

"I'm not!" Danny cut in quickly. "Really, Mom, I'm definitely not!" He assured, meeting her eyes squarely as he spoke.

A smile flittered across Maddie's face. "I'm glad," she admitted. "But that still doesn't take away from the facts. Danny, you need to start caring. This is _your_ life. And ultimately, you're the one who will need to decide what to do with it, not anyone else."

The sound of running water cut off in the washroom and Maddie tilted her head toward the closed door. "We're going to have a conversation about this. A very _long_ conversation. One in which you will _participate_." She promised and Danny winced. "But for now, I want you to think about what I've said. Can you do that, Danny?"

Looking into her sincere, concerned eyes, Danny could not refuse. "Yeah…" He nodded slowly.

"Good." Maddie looked relieved "Now you should probably go wake up Jazz and Sam." Before Danny could back out the door, Maddie swept him up into a brief hug. "I love you, honey."

Danny let out a low laugh, patting her on the back stiffly. "Yeah… you too." And he quickly disentangled himself before slipping gratefully out of his parents' room.

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Danny pulled the door to his parents' room shut behind him and turned in time to see Jazz making her way to the bathroom, yawning widely as she did. Spotting Danny, she raised an eyebrow.

"You're up already?" She said skeptically as though she couldn't believe her eyes. "Did you even get any sleep?"

"Some," he shrugged, answering truthfully. "Tucker woke up at some point—"

"He did?" Jazz interrupted, suddenly more aware.

Danny smiled. "He did. He's back to normal, Jazz."

"Oh thank goodness." Jazz sagged against the doorframe, running a hand through her long hair that was tangled from a restless sleep. "This weekend was a nightmare. I'm glad it's over…"

"For now." Danny said, pointedly refining her statement. "The museum is still dangerous and that ghost-human shield hasn't gone away."

Jazz eyed her brother closely. "Yes… and you haven't said anything about that yet. What is haunting the museum, Danny? What was that thing that came chasing after you and attacked you as you were leaving? It had claws, and fangs… and it's eyes were the same as Tucker's were. What was it?"

Danny shifted, avoiding her eyes. "I don't really know…" Seeing her dubious look, he threw up his hands. "I really don't! At least, not completely. But we aren't going to talk about this now, Jazz. I gotta get changed for school and Mom and Dad are going to be out any second to check on Tucker."

"Ok… " She relented, skimming her eyes over his form. "You're still in the same clothes from two nights ago aren't you? I guess you're lucky they don't get shredded when you're in your ghost form." She frowned. "Speaking of which… I'm always seeing you tear your hazmat suit when you're… when you're ghost." She always had trouble calling him a ghost, Danny noticed, though he didn't bother paying much attention to it. "But whenever you change back, then turn ghost again, the suit is fixed. How does that work?"

Danny knew he was giving his sister a very odd expression: something between a grimace and a smirk. "You're not seriously going to ask me to explain that are you?"

Her expression told him clearly that, yes, she did expect him to explain it, and he'd better do a good job of it too while he was at it.

Danny sighed. "Look, Jazz. I've got school to worry about, Lancer, homework that I haven't done, Dash, detention and in-class suspension. Not to mention Tucker and that whole side of the mess. Just gimme a break, 'kay?"

Jazz looked conflicted and for a moment he thought she'd press the issue. So, instead of sticking around for her answer, he stepped around her and quickly ducked into his room.

Sam was sleeping deeply on his bed, his star-spangled comforter drawn tightly around her frame. Her face was clear of any tension and her lips were parted slightly as she exhaled in soft puffs of air. Danny shuffled over to the bed and admired how calm she looked in sleep. How untroubled. He knew that, as soon as she woke, her eyes would sharpen and narrow with wit. Her mouth would twitch in on one corner with cynicism. It was interesting—nice, even—to see her features wiped clean. He almost regretted having to wake her up to the real world.

Nevertheless… "Sam," he called. "Sam, you gotta wake up." He grabbed her shoulder through the covers and shook her lightly.

Sam's brows drew down into a frown and she grumbled contritely. Curling into a ball, she rolled over and out from under Danny's hold. She muttered something too low to catch and then drew the covers over her head, hiding herself from view.

Danny's eyebrows lifted, his mouth turning upward in amusement.

"Okay, you wanna play it that way?" He strode over to his window and threw the curtains open, letting the sun stream brightly into the room. Then he came back and promptly ripped the covers off his friend's head.

Sam growled loudly, throwing her arms over her eyes. "Argh! Danny! This is cruel and unusual torture!"

"What? The sun?" He chuckled.

"_Yes_." She practically hissed and, gathering up the duvet, promptly burrowed deep into the covers once more.

"_Sa-am_," Danny whined. "C'mon, you gotta get up. I don't want to have to get creative." As he said this he eyed Youngblood, who was still unconscious and floating above his desk. After a few moments of inactivity from the heap of blankets on the bed, he shook his head and used his magic words for the morning.

"Besides, we have to go check on Tucker."

"Tucker's awake?"

And they were in business.

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"And you don't have any lingering pain or feelings of sickness?"

"No… well, it hurts but nothing too bad." Tucker was sitting on top of the dissection table—feet dangling over the side—as Maddie leaned over him in concern, inspecting the inflamed flesh surrounding the stitches over Tucker's sternum. When he reached up to scratch them, she slapped his hand away.

"Don't touch it. If you accidentally tear open the stitches you'll start bleeding again and it'll scar worse." She said all this with the distracted tone of a mother who had said similar words many times before. The Spectre Spectacles sat atop her head and she lowered them to take a better look at Tucker's chest.

"Well, I don't see any presence of abnormal activity. The foreign presence is gone. You're all set Tucker." She smiled at the boy brightly, patting him on the knee.

"What about…?" Tucker gestured at the black mark that still stained his upper torso and cheek.

Maddie turned toward the lab desk—not noticing how, a few feet behind her, Danny quickly moved away out of her direct vision—and took off the Spectacles, placing them on the table before picking up a thermometer. When Tucker squirmed, she sent him a stern look and the teen pouted before opening his mouth obligingly. A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she stuck the thermometer under Tucker's tongue.

"I'm afraid it might take a while before the mark fades completely." She said as she looked at the watch on her arm. "But it should definitely disappear in time, probably less than two weeks. It has already faded since yesterday. Ok, let's see." She pulled the thermometer out and nodded at the number she saw displayed.

"You're very lucky Tucker. I won't mince words, if Jack hadn't known what to do… or if Danny hadn't come and gotten us when he did—" Here she shot an appraising look at Danny, who looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. "You might have died."

There was a long silence after she said this. Tucker had paled and he swallowed, his hazel irises seemed to tremble as they fixed on Maddie.

"I… I'm… Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Fenton." He said sincerely. Behind him, Jack beamed, laying a giant hand on Tucker's shoulder.

Don't worry about it, son! We consider you family 'round here and a Fenton never lets his family down!"

Maddie lay a soft sterilized pad over Tucker's stitches and then taped it in place. "You'll need to change this daily. You also need to make sure to clean the wound and check to make sure it doesn't get infected. I can give you a few extra bandages if you want to do this on your own or you can come over here." Tucker shook his head, indicating he could do it on his own. "Okay, but I still want you to come over tomorrow so I can look you over and make sure everything looks fine."

"Shouldn't we take Tucker to the hospital or something, Mom?" Jazz piped up.

Tucker's eyes widened dramatically and his hands came up to ward the idea away. "No hospitals!"

Maddie bit her lip, and looked back at her daughter. "I agree with Tucker. Although it would be nice to get another opinion, the doctors would want to know how Tucker got injured and who stitched him up. It is… very obvious that Tucker was cut. There's only one hospital in Amity Park and it would be easy to find out that Tucker was not worked on by a doctor." Here she turned to Tucker. "I would never put you in danger, and if it looks at all like the wound is getting worse then we'll certainly take you to a hospital. But for now… it might be best to keep things under wraps."

"Of course! No hospitals!" Tucker nodded happily, hopping off the table. He tugged a red sweater over his head—borrowed from Danny, as his own shirt had been shorn off by Jack before the surgery. The pants he was wearing were also borrowed since his own were damp and dusty after two days of wear in the tunnels under the museum. Looking to the other side of the room, he spotted Sam and smiled at seeing her looking normal and unhurt.

Sam had her arms crossed and looked distinctly uncomfortable in Jazz's old clothes. Even though Jazz herself had outgrown the clothes, they were still somewhat large for Sam's small frame. At least the T-shirt was black. Danny's sister had a disturbingly large number of turquoise outfits. She had also tucked the jeans into the heavy combat boots she was wearing, but Tucker and even Danny had commented on how odd it was to see Sam in pants period.

Speaking of Danny…

Tucker's eyes narrowed as he regarded his best friend, noticing details he'd missed in the chaos of last night. Danny was standing against the wall, and seemed to be doing his best to pay attention. But his head was lolling and he was leaning heavily against the wall. Dark rings underlined bloodshot eyes. He was bone-white and was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. Tucker knew his best friend: Danny never wore long sleeves. He'd always had a high tolerance to the cold, even more so after he'd gained the ability to hold blocks of ice in his hands without getting a chill.

But that wasn't strictly correct. Danny _rarely_ wore long-sleeves. When he did, it was to hide injuries that hadn't healed the night before.

Tucker remembered the behemoth ghost dog that had kidnapped him and Sam. He shivered. Had Danny fought that monster?

"Now, Tucker…" He looked up at Danny's mother and then fidgeted under the piercing stare she was giving him. "Do you want to tell me what trouble you got into? How did you get that mark?"

"I… ummm… Y'see Mrs. Fenton…" He stammered, completely incapable to coming up with a lie as he was put on the spot.

"Mom! It's 7:30! We have to leave now if we want to get to school on time!" Jazz interrupted and Tucker sighed with relief.

Seeing the diversion for what is was, Maddie still could not refute the truth of Jazz's statement. Looking up at her daughter, then down at Tucker, she let out a breath of air. "Okay, yes you should go. But I think you should talk about this with someone, Tucker. I'm not your mother, but unless you want me to call your mother, I suggest you talk to me."

Faced with that formidable threat, Tucker quickly nodded, snapping off a quick "Yes, Mrs. Fenton!". Because, as bad as it was to talk with Danny's parents, it would be worse with his own. The Fentons, at least, had an open mind about these things. If he told his own parents, they'd probably freak out. It wasn't necessarily that they didn't believe in ghosts—they did. After Pariah Dark there wasn't a citizen in Amity who didn't believe. But that didn't mean they were okay with it.

Tucker's parents had always been a bit weird when it came to ghosts. They had one rule for Tucker: 'Don't'. Don't look, don't touch, don't go near it, don't talk about it, don't even think about it. While they weren't as bad as Sam's parents—they didn't hold protests or take out restraining orders against his best friends—they did have their own… weirdness.

At home, Tucker could hardly believe he lived in Amity Park, the most haunted city in the country. His parents never talked about ghosts, and they never allowed him to talk about ghosts. If news of a ghost attack came up on the television, his father would change the channel. When the entire school was infected with ghost powers, his parents hadn't even asked if Tucker had been infected. They'd just sat at his bedside in the hospital and discussed work and politics while his broken leg recovered.

As for the Fentons… Tucker didn't even want to touch that topic. Danny would never know how hard Tucker had defended their friendship to his parents. In the end it was only because the Foleys had taken a shine to the shy, black-haired, blue-eyed boy and come to the conclusion that he had nothing to do with his parents' paranormal profession that they'd allowed the friendship.

If Tucker's parents found out he'd been hurt by a ghost… or worse, that he was _fighting_ ghosts… Well, he actually had no idea how they'd react. And he really wasn't keen on finding out.

"Danny… Danny… we gotta go." Jazz was whispering in her brother's ear and he nodded once, shifting off the wall and climbing the stairs after her. Sam followed in silence and Tucker kept close to the tail of the group. Looking back he saw that Mrs. Fenton was watching them file out with some reluctance in her eyes. Mr. Fenton though, seemed oblivious as he held open the lab's freezer, studying something inside.

In the kitchen, Jazz had gathered her backpack and was jingling her keys in her hand. "All set? I can drive you guys in my car."

"What about our books?" Tucker asked.

Jazz waved off his concern. "Your backpacks are still in the back of my car from Thursday. I never took them out… I'd actually forgotten you'd left them there. Let's go, if we leave now we might even arrive early."

Just then, Danny's head, which had been bent over his backpack, snapped up. "Hold on guys." He said hurriedly. "I left my cell phone in my room, gimme two minutes." And he dashed out of the room.

"One minute!" Jazz yelled after him as he bounded up the stairs. "And we'll be waiting for you in the car!"

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Danny rifled through the discarded pile of clothes that lay at the foot of his bed until he saw the telltale shine of his mother's utility belt. Rifling through the pockets, he first palmed his cell phone, and then he kept searching until he found his second goal: the Lunch Lady's memento—or the soul stone, as he'd started to refer to it in his mind.

Taking a moment to admire its iridescent depths, he then curled his fingers around the perfect sphere before dropping it the pocket of his worn jeans. Pushing off his knees, he rose to his feet and his gaze was caught by a glowing in the corner of his vision.

Turning, he considered Youngblood, who floated demurely a few inches above his desk, casting an ethereal glow over the galaxy classification scheme that he'd tacked to his wall. He wondered briefly if he should do something about the small ghost. Unfortunately, the shredded remains of his Fenton Thermos were still lying some hundred odd feet underground Amity Park's Museum of Natural History and he didn't really want to go steal another one from the lab at the moment.

Youngblood could keep, he figured. The chances of his parents discovering him were slight. Worst came to worst, the ghost would awaken and cause some damage to his room before flying off. Danny would take the risk.

Turning to his phone, in his hand, Danny flipped it open, checking it for messages more out of habit than anything else.

The first thing he saw was the picture he'd snapped in the museum— the bulging pewter manhole he'd phased through to get to the subterranean tunnels was still displayed across his screen. The picture was dark, but he could still make out the odd markings carved into the metal.

He'd upload the image to his computer later, he reasoned as he exited out of the camera function. That was when he noticed the red notification for missed calls and voicemails.

Raising an eyebrow—he hadn't realized he'd missed any calls—Danny pulled up call log and abruptly stiffened.

The calls he'd missed were from Tucker and Jazz. So were the voicemails.

Both had been left on Thursday—the day Tucker and Sam had been kidnapped.

He had a sudden urge to delete the messages without ever listening to them. But, naturally, his fingers were already dialling his voicemail and, almost against his own will, he raised the phone to his ear.

"_First unheard message."_

"_Danny! Danny!"_ Tucker's voice screamed over what sounded like a hurricane of wind. _"Why aren't you picking up! Sam and I… We're at the museum! I know it was stupid but had to come back—we had to check it out… But—dammit, Danny, you have to come quick! It's—it's a monster! It's too big, we can't fight this._" Tucker swore loudly. _"Danny you have to come—please, you have to come now! It-It spoke t-to us. I-it said it—it wants—wants to eat—NO! No, get away!" _Tucker's voice was suddenly drowned in roaring wind and static. Danny had to strain to hear his next words. _"Get away from her! Sam! SAM!"_

And the line went dead.

"_Second unheard message."_

"_Danny! How come you aren't picking up your phone? Did you get into trouble? Did something happen? Oh my God, Danny, I think I made a mistake—I made a big mistake. Sam and Tucker wanted to come and check out the museum so I drove them here. I was going to stop them, you have to believe me I wanted to stop them and make them wait until we could get you—but they said they'd be fine. I-I thought it'd be okay. But Danny, Danny, something went wrong. It's all wrong! Sam and Tucker, they got caught by the ghost. It's… I don't even know what it is. I thought it was going to get me too… I ran… It threw me out of the museum, and now there's this shield! It's all around the museum; I can't get passed it! Oh God, oh God, what if something happened to them? What if they're hurt? Danny, I'm so sorry… you have to come! Please come quickly!"_

"_End of messages. To delete messages, press 7. To save messages, press 9. To—"_

He heard no more, having already pulled the phone away from his ear to press down hard on the button. Lowering the phone down, he gazed at its illuminated surface with an expression utterly blank of emotion. But his fingers betrayed what his face refused to reveal: curling around the phone and squeezing until the plastic creaked in protest.

_This_ was what happened when he failed to do his duty, when his friends felt they needed to pick up his slack. _This_ was what happened when he let Sam and Tucker and Jazz get too involved and they started thinking they could take on his enemies for him. _This_… he could not allow _this _to happen again.

And he was not going to let himself forget that.

He stared down at his hand, at his bloodless thumb pressed firmly over the glowing '9'.

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_End Chapter 28_

_To Be Continued…_

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I admit I enjoy these little conversations between the characters, just to get some diversity in the interactions and some character development. But if you guys think I'm overdoing it please tell me :)

Reviewers, you are AWESOME! I know I've said this, but I'll keep saying it 'cause it's true: you guys are directly responsible for these updates. While I am thoroughly enjoying this story and would work on it regardless, I would not have half the motivation to break though blocks or update within any reasonable period of time without you guys. So THANK YOU! **pearl84, Princess of Rose, Honeygirl30, Phanfan925, XxhoneyleafxX, Yugisrose, Cry-Pom, VampireFrootloopsRule, DPfruitloop, MidnightResWri, supaherolena02, smallvillephantom14, Kitsune-001, Ribke D'Crazy **and **ELunamoon!**

**Adio!**


	29. Monday Morning Murder

**Hiya!**

HA! I survived! I can't believe it. Honestly, I thought I'd just keel over at some point during exam week. I pulled a two-nighter for my property exam and afterwards I was staggering around in a drugged stupor wondering how the grass got so green and linking that to the purpose of life on Earth. It was definitely very weird.

So here we go! For everyone emerging out of self-induced isolation in tiny cubicles tucked away in the deepest recesses between the dimly lit library stacks and blinking sun-starved eyes—an extra long update! (These chapters keep getting longer. It's not intentional, really :P)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny Phantom.

Oh yeah! And if you guys need a refresher of the events, I'd suggest **checking back to chapter 18**… ;)

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulchre**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 29 — **Monday Morning Murder_

"Danny! Dude, where are you? We're going to be late for school!"

Tucker's urgent yell startled Danny and he scrambled to catch his phone as it slipped in his fingers. Stuffing it into his pocket, he jogged out of his room.

"There you are! We've been waiting for ages!" Tucker exclaimed from the open doorway as Danny jumped the last three steps to the ground. "What did you do—fall asleep up there?"

"Nah," In spite of the sombre mood that had taken him in his room, Danny found it surprisingly easy to unwind around his best friend. He grinned easily, revelling in the light feeling. "My phone was just giving me some issues."

Tucker shrugged as the boys made their way down the driveway to Jazz's cherry convertible. "Whatever. We might still be on time to avoid a late. But you're probably on a stricter schedule than me."

Danny squinted in annoyance as he opened the front door to his sister's car—deftly ignoring her annoyed 'Where _were _you?'—and let Tucker get into the back before taking a seat next to her. "That's right," he groaned. "I have in-class suspension all this week and detention for the next month… Hey, what do you think Lancer'll do about me skipping class on Friday? Can he assign me a double detention?" He directed his last question toward Jazz, who simply shrugged as she started up the car and pulled out of the driveway.

"Hey wait a sec…" Tucker poked Danny from the back seat. "You skipped Friday? Wasn't that your first day off suspension?"

"It was…" Danny twisted around as far as he could in his seat and he looked at Tucker and Sam. "But I couldn't waste time going to school while you guys were kidnapped could I? I went to Clockwork for help. Jazz skipped too, she covered for all of us." Jazz looked at him in surprise.

"You knew?"

He sent her a crooked grin.

"What happened in the museum?" Sam spoke up suddenly. Danny and Tucker stared at her, even Jazz took a moment to study her in the rearview mirror. The girl had been uncharacteristically silent for the entire morning. In fact, this was the first time she'd spoken to anyone except Danny since waking up.

"Sam… you sure you're okay?" Danny asked in concern, but his attempts to catch her eye were foiled by her averted gaze and the long stands of hair flapping around his face.

"Fine." Sam answered shortly. And then her eyes rose and she folded her arms. "But I want to know what happened in that museum when you came to find us."

"Actually… I kinda want to know too…" Tucker, who was rummaging through his backpack, looked up to Danny with a somewhat apologetic eye.

Danny sighed, running a hand through his hair and then using it to hold his long bangs back from his eyes. "Look, guys, now's not exactly the best time to talk about that, but… Hey Tuck, what's that?" His eyes had locked onto the papers Tucker was riffling through.

Tucker looked down, then frowned. "Oh this? These are the maps I printed off of the tunnels under the museum—" Before he could get another word out, Danny had snatched the papers right out of his hand and swung back forward in his seat.

Facing forward in the car, Tucker and Sam could not see the look of shock on Danny's face as he skimmed the plans so clearly laid out before him. The edges of the papers fanned in the wind and he clutched them tightly. He bent over them, protecting them from the wind as he flipped through them and studied the diagrams.

In red, Tucker had circled the Anthropology room where Danny had first fought Legion. Stapled beneath that was the corresponding layout of the underground tunnels.

It was all right there, and as he looked at it he could clearly see the layout—his mind superimposing his memory of the winding twisting maze onto the map in his hands. Now that he saw the map he could see: it wasn't a maze. At least, not like he's first thought. His finger trailed between two thick lines drawn on the paper and in his mind he could see a never-ending hallway of brick with walls that towered over him, narrowly illuminated under his headlamp, dust motes heavy in the air. A few labels on the map stuck out: 'Whale Bone Room'—that one made the pink scars on his torso itch—and 'Soul Sepulchre'. The Soul Sepulchre was the room where he'd seen Legion pacing around Youngblood with the thousand robed figures chanting—he was almost certain. It was the biggest room on the map and the biggest room in his memory. That had to be it.

Just holding the map in his hand gave Danny some confidence. If he'd only had it when he'd broke in… it might have saved him so much time and anxiety during his aimless, haphazard search…

Instead, it had been sitting in Tucker's backpack, getting cold under the backseat of Jazz's car.

"Did you know about this?" He held the papers up in one hand, tone coloured with accusation as he looked at Jazz.

Even a quick glance to the side was able to tell Jazz about the scale and complexity of the maps in Danny's hand. "No… I didn't know." She denied. "I'm sorry Danny. If I had known I would have definitely told you… you had to navigate those tunnels blind, didn't you? And—" She remembered the creature that had wrapped its thick hand around her brother's neck—that had _bit_ him. And she shuddered. "Were you chased the entire way?"

"Chased?" Tucker and Sam were both leaning forward, listening in on the conversation. But if they were expecting Danny to elaborate, they were disappointed. He remained silent as Casper High came into view.

"We're here." He stated the obvious as Jazz turned into the parking lot and quickly found a spot to stop the car. People were still streaming in through the front doors, it seemed they'd still somehow managed to arrive early, and Danny was relieved: he really didn't need any more trouble.

He hopped out of the car and pulled the seat forward to let Sam and Tucker out, but before he could join his friends in walking toward the school, Jazz called him over.

"Yeah?" He asked, hands stuffed into his pockets as he shifted impatiently.

Jazz propped her backpack against the side of her car and used one knee to steady it as she drew out a blue plastic folder. From this, she slipped out a small square of paper that she silently handed to Danny.

One glance at the paper had Danny's eyebrows shooting up. It read, in a flowing cursive:

'_Dear Mr. Lancer,_

_Please excuse Danny, Sam and Tucker for their absence on Friday, April 25. They were sick with the stomach flu._

_Sincerely,'_

And below that was signed Madeline Fenton in tall loops.

"Jazz, not that I don't appreciate the gesture," He, after all, could never hope to copy their mother's signature so convincingly. "But you were Lancer's star pupil; don't you think he'll recognize your handwriting?"

Jazz waved him off. "Don't worry. I'd print for in class essays and tests. I don't think Mr. Lancer has ever seen my cursive."

"It looks just like Mom's signature." Danny held the note close to his eyes and examined it critically under the sunlight before slanting a look on his sister. "When'd you get so good at forgery?"

Jazz forced a laugh, then slung her bag on her shoulder before starting toward the school at a brisk clip. Danny jogged after her. She offered him no response and he was forced to drop the point as they entered Casper High.

* * *

I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

* * *

It hadn't been noticeable while he'd been outside, but the moment he stepped through the doors and into Casper High it became impossible to ignore.

People were staring at him. They tracked him with their eyes through the halls, whispering behind raised hands and _staring_. When Danny turned to return the looks, he was met by a wall of feigned indifference as people looked away, pretending to be absorbed in the contents of their lockers or conversations with their friends. Then, the moment he turned back around, the stares resumed. And he felt them. The stares burned into the back of his neck and the whispers buzzed around his head like mosquitoes.

"What's going on?" He hissed to Jazz from the corner of his mouth. "Why's everyone looking at me?" Under normal circumstances, he might have been pleased with his sudden popularity, but this was too sudden and unexpected… not to mention plain creepy. People weren't looking at him in respect or interest; they were hedging around him like he was some feral animal.

One guy, Mikey the nerd, bumped shoulders with Danny as he walked by. Then, seeing whom he'd hit, raised both hands in surrender, babbling out a pathetic excuse before practically running away.

Danny stared after the fleeing boy, then turned his eyes on Jazz. His expression was a clear '_what the hell?_'.

"Oh, Danny," She sighed, looking down at him sympathetically. "You know how after—"

"Jasmine?"

Danny was left in the dark as Jazz cut herself off, glancing up in surprise at the man who'd addressed her.

"Mr. Khosa!" Jazz exclaimed and Danny turned to look. He'd heard of Mr. Khosa. The man taught the only introduction to psychology course offered at Casper and was one of Jazz's favourite teachers. This was the man whose rhetoric Jazz came home spewing everyday as she tried to psychoanalyze Danny. He was a tall, dark haired and dark-eyed with a shadow of a beard around his mouth. He was casually dressed in jeans and a royal purple shirt that was rolled up to his elbows. He didn't seem like the kind of person who'd teach psychology.

That is—his canines didn't ooze venom like Spectra's.

What caught Danny's eye though, was the rather grim expression on the man's face. He had the look of someone about to deliver bad news.

"Jasmine, can I speak with you for a moment?" Mr. Khosa gestured vaguely down the hall and Jazz nodded eagerly.

"Of course, sir! Danny… I'm sorry. Just, don't pay attention to them, ok? Just ignore it for now and I'm sure it'll all blow over in a few days." If Jazz's words were meant to reassure, they didn't work.

"Very good, follow me Jasmine." As Mr. Khosa ushered Jazz away, his eyes fell on Danny and they locked gazes.

It was an odd few seconds that Danny spent under the eyes of his sister's teacher. The man sized him up, seemed to be analysing him, and Danny could've sworn there was some familiarity there. In a moment he realized what seemed out of place: this teacher knew who he was. Danny had no idea how this was possible—unless Jazz had talked about him, which was unlikely—he couldn't even recall seeing this man walking around the halls of Casper.

That meant that whatever rumours were floating around school about him had reached even the teachers.

"Good to meet you, Mr. Fenton. I've heard… interesting things." And with that, Mr. Khosa walked away, Jazz hurrying at his heels after sending Danny one last apologetic look.

'_Great. Just great.' _Danny rubbed at his eyes. _'Even the teachers I don't know already think I'm a skeet.' _

Without Jazz as his buffer, Danny felt the gazes of his classmates keenly on his back. His ears picked up some of the whispers:

"—_back.'"_

"_Can't believe… already—."_

"—_fight. Beat up—"_

"—_suspended." _

"_Hanged a cat."_

"—_jock, with a bat."_

He hurried through the halls toward his locker and it was with much relief that, as he neared, he saw Sam and Tucker waiting for him.

"Yes! Finally!" He gasped as he tossed his backpack to the ground. "Everyone's gone crazy! Are they still staring?"

Tucker cast an eye around and nodded. Danny sighed as he spun the lock on his locker. Normally he would've just reached straight through the metal door for his books, but with so many eyes studying him he was forced to do it the normal way.

"Urgh…" After the third failure, Danny gave up and slammed his forehead on the locker. "I forgot the combination."

"Oh, move over," Sam displaced him and skilfully spun the lock, opening it on the first try.

Danny gaped. "How did you—"

"Honestly! It's your own birthday backwards; I don't know how you mange to forget it." Sam rolled her eyes and smirked at Danny's flush. When a group of juniors passed by, pointing and staring at Danny, she scoffed derisively. "Look at them all. Two weeks ago, they wouldn't have given us the time of day, now everyone wants to gossip about you. They are all sheep, Danny, waiting to be herded into position by a loud voice and a stick. A lot of people only know the result, not how it really went down, but making up outrageous rumours seems to be the coolest new thing to do."

"How what went down?" Danny asked, confused

"You took down Dash, man. That's big news!" Tucker exclaimed.

"Is _that_ what this is about?" Danny wondered, surprised. "I'm popular because I got into a fight and got suspended?"

"Instant bad boy rep," Sam confirmed. She looked amused. "Not to mention street cred for proving that you can handle yourself in a fight. You should take advantage of it while it lasts."

Danny frowned at her. "What's up with you today, anyway, Sam? I thought you didn't approve of me fighting Dash."

She lifted her shoulders, thoroughly unconcerned. "I didn't. But Dash had it coming. Besides this bad boy reputation could work in our favour."

Tucker leaned in conspiratorially. "Girls have asked me if you're _single_ dude! Not just freshmen, but _juniors!_"

Danny stopped scrutinizing Sam and turned to Tucker. "Really?" He asked with childlike wonderment, eyes shining.

Sam scowled and slapped Danny's shoulder. "Snap out of it, Romeo. Those girls are only interested in the newest fad. They'll eat you up and spit you out the second Dash changes his hairstyle."

"Maybe." Danny shrugged, not disputing Sam's point. "That doesn't mean I can't take advantage while it lasts, right?"

Sam sent him a disgusted look. "That's so shallow, Danny."

The blue-eyed boy grinned at her suddenly. "There we go! Now we've got the old Sam back!"

Sam looked at him, startled, and she opened her mouth to reply.

"FENTON!"

As one, Sam, Danny and Tucker spun around. A few feet down the hall, huffing and seething, Dash snarled, his fists clenched as he glared menacingly in Danny's direction.

Every student in the near vicinity halted, heads swinging around to watch the confrontation. Danny backed up until he hit the line of lockers, fully expecting Dash to charge at him like the bull he resembled. It was the first time the hybrid had seen the burly blond in days and he couldn't help but notice that there was still a noticeable discoloration around Dash's left eye.

Dash took a threatening step forward, but was halted on both sides by Kwan and a second burly jock.

"Dash, chill man. You don't want to start something here."

"Yeah, you're already on thin ice with the coach. You don't wanna risk getting benched for the rest of the season."

Dash growled deeply, and he violently shrugged off his friends' hands before hiking his jacket back up around his shoulders. "I'm not letting you get away with this, _toad_. You can count on it. Your hide is _mine_." Raising two fingers to his eyes, Dash pointed them at Danny in the universal 'I'm watching you' gesture before stalking off with his posse.

The noise level in the corridor gradually picked back up as people moved on. Many seemed disappointed that they'd been cheated out of a fight.

Danny sagged against the lockers. "Great… now he's going to be after me even _more_. Like he wasn't already hunting me down between feedings. But… well, don't get me wrong, I'm glad he didn't stuff me in my locker, but I don't get it. What's he 'not going to let me get away with'? I mean, _I'm_ the one who got suspended after our fight, he just got off with a few detentions."

"You did some damage to his reputation, I think." Tucker answered.

Sam eyed Danny. "That… and we think he blames you for his cat."

"You can't be serious! He thinks I hanged his cat?"

"Danny? _Sam? Tucker?_" Looking a bit frazzled and out of breath after running from who-knew-where, Valerie drew up near the trio on her way to Mr. Lancer's homeroom. "How—? When did—? You guys are ok!" She gasped.

Sam and Tucker exchanged glances before looking back at Danny. For his part, Danny was too busy wincing over the memory of his last conversation with Valerie to notice his friends' looks. Not just that, but he'd completely forgotten to check up on her post her disastrous encounter with Vlad.

'_Good going Fenton. Way to be a friend._' He berated himself.

"Of course we're ok, why wouldn't we be?" Sam shot back suspiciously.

Valerie made to say something but Danny, as he gathered his wits, spoke first.

"She knows guys." He said awkwardly, a hand going to the back of his neck. "I told her."

"You _told_ her?" Tucker gaped, alarmed. "You told her—"

"Told her _what_?" Sam interrupted Tucker sharply.

"I told her you guys were kidnapped by ghosts." Danny admitted, sending both Sam and Tucker significant looks. He was glad Sam had spoken before Tucker spilled an even bigger secret.

"You did?" Sam and Tucker both turned on Danny and he cringed, bringing up his hands. "Why?"

"Look—" He started.

"He was probably completely stressed out at having lost you both." Valerie interjected reasonably, sending Danny her own pointed look, which he returned with a rueful smile. "Believe me, he was a mess. When I came by his house to drop off your PDA," here she nodded at Tucker. "He was prepping to launch a one man rescue party into the ghost zone. He was pretty torn up about what to do and probably just confided in me because I was a sympathetic ear. You guys are lucky to have such a good friend."

Sam and Tucker were looking at Danny again, but this time, there was something different about their expressions.

They were doing that silent interaction thing again, much to Valerie's irritation. Tucker and Sam turned inward to face Danny, physically excluding her. Then, her eyes narrowed as she spotted the black discoloration painting Tucker's exposed cheek.

"Hey, what happened to your face?" She asked and the trio looked at her. It took a moment for Tucker to realize she was talking to him.

"Oh… uh, me?" He laughed nervously and both Danny and Sam looked at him. "Well… it was… the ghost, y'know? But, I'm surprised you noticed. You're, like, the first person to comment on it. I even passed Lancer earlier and he didn't say anything." Admittedly, Tucker had been trying to hide the mark and the teacher had looked preoccupied with something else, but still…

"That's a bruise? It's a weird shape for a bruise." Valerie said, surprised. She eyed the way the black mark snaked over his jaw and disappeared under the collar of his shirt. Tucker merely shrugged.

"And, well, it's perfectly obvious to me." Valerie continued, one corned of her mouth lifting. "You're not that much darker than me, of course I'd notice."

Danny's head tilted, somewhat thrown by the casual reference to skin colour. But Tucker seemed to take it in stride.

"Really?" Tucker grinned. "'Cuz when we met, I could've sworn—"

"Shut it." Valerie cut him off, apparently already knowing what he was going to say. Tucker laughed.

Valerie rolled her eyes and glanced back at Danny and Sam. "Are you wearing pants?" She remarked offhandedly to Sam.

Sam fidgeted in Jazz's hand-me-downs. "Obviously." Was her dry reply.

"Hey, 'm just asking." Valerie tossed up her hands. "Don't get all defensive."

Before Sam could respond, Danny stepped forward. "Val… I-I'm sorry. You're one of my friends too, you know that, right?" Valerie didn't immediately answer and he rubbed his hands together anxiously.

Above them, the warning bell rang and the four teens looked up at it in unison.

Danny turned to his two best friends. "Guys, can you go into class ahead of me? I just need to talk to Valerie for a sec."

Sam looked like she was about to protest, but Tucker rolled his eyes. "Sure, man." He turned away, pulling Sam along behind him.

Left alone in the emptying hall, Danny and Valerie looked at each other. He fidgeted uneasily while she simply watched him.

"I mean it, Valerie." Danny said at length, looking straight into her eyes. "I'm sorry for yelling at you when you came by my house. I shouldn't have gotten so upset."

Valerie considered him for a moment before relaxing. Her smile was small, but sincere. "It's okay. So Danny Fenton has a temper. It's good to know that you're not such a pushover all the time."

"Oie…" He protested half-heartedly, grinning as he, too, relaxed.

"Don't think I'm not going to get you to make it up to me though." She threatened with a raised eyebrow.

"Uh huh, right…" He matched her arched eyebrow and added a lopsided smirk.

Together, the teens walked down the nearly empty halls. Students were streaming into their homeroom classes and Danny and Valerie loitered outside Mr. Lancer's homeroom class. Students passed them and Danny felt himself flush under the numerous stares. Valerie saw his discomfort and tossed her head. "Ignore them." She stated bluntly. "Or, at the very least, enjoy the popularity while it lasts."

"Gee, thanks Val." Danny said sarcastically. "Good to know you think the only way I'll ever be popular is by beating up people. Who should I lose it with next? The wrestling team captain? You think that'll make the seniors notice me?"

Valerie probably would've been offended by his standoffish words, if he hadn't sounded so abashed. "Hey, we're going to work on that, okay? It'll only be another week before I can take this thing off and then we'll start on the sparring practice." She said encouragingly, gesturing at the sling on her left arm.

"Besides," Valerie added thoughtfully. "The seniors are already noticing you." She jerked her chin at a group of students down the hall.

The students—tall and undoubtedly twelfth-graders—stood in a huddle near a group of lockers. Sure enough, every now and again one of them would look up and gaze down in their direction. Danny caught one pair of eyes—that of a tall, lanky boy with unruly strawberry-blond curls held off his forehead by a wide sweatband—and quickly averted his gaze. That was when he noticed their jackets. Each of the seniors was wearing a jersey with the words 'Casper High Wrestling' on the back.

"Oh crud. You _can't_ be serious." And he'd _just_ been talking about them! Danny ducked his head, swerving around so his back was to the group of seniors. He leaned in toward Valerie as though she would protect him. "You don't think they're planning on getting revenge for Dash, do you?" This was typical. Just typical.

Valerie laughed. "Relax. The wrestling team has this ongoing blood feud thing with the football team. I don't think you'll be taking any slack from them."

"Oh…" Danny straightened and backed away from Valerie. "Sure. I knew that."

"No you didn't." She teased, carefully hiding her disappointment at their lost proximity. "You really don't know anything about Casper's hierarchy and politics, do you?"

He made a non-committal sound. "Meh. Never really bothered. I wanted to be popular at some point, but that really didn't pan out. My sister's popular and I'm invisible. These days I'm good with that."

"That's right, your sister. Jazz…" Valerie began.

Danny blinked at her. "Yeah, you've met her, remember? I introduced you while… when we were…" He fell quiet, suddenly absorbed in his fiddling fingers.

Valerie blithely evaded the reference to their brief dating episode. "Sure. But I knew her even before then. Everyone knows Jazz. She's the smartest kid in school. Even the seniors taking university credits have gone to her for 'help' on an assignment."

Danny picked up on the odd intonation. "What do you mean 'help'?"

Valerie stared at him. "You don't—?" Then, catching herself, she shook her head, adjusting her backpack and straightening her orange skirt. "Nevermind. I wanted to ask you something else."

"What?" He asked hesitantly.

"How did Sam and Tucker get rescued?" Her voice held barely restrained interest. "Was it your parents?"

Danny felt a bubble of indignation rise at the fact that Valerie didn't even consider that _he _might have saved Sam and Tucker on his own, but he wrestled with the emotion, pushing it back. Instead he focused the energy on trying to come up with a convincing lie. "Not my parents." He shook his head. "It was Danny Phantom. He saved them."

"_Phantom_?" Valerie spat, and then, probably remembering that she wasn't supposed to know the ghost personally, abruptly wiped her face clean and pasted on a vaguely curious expression. "But how'd you get a hold of him? Ghosts are pretty hard to track down, even Phantom—or so I've heard. And haven't the ghosts disappeared from Amity Park recently?"

It was a good question. Danny bit his tongue. He'd known she would ask this. He just hoped the answer he'd slapped together would have the effect he wanted.

"Vlad helped."

"_Vlad?_" Valerie echoed, with probably more inflection than she should have had. Over their heads, the second bell rang, but it went ignored.

"Vlad Masters. He went to college with my parents and is good friends with my Dad. You met him that one time during the ghost invasion, remember?" Danny clarified, playing along and acting as though Valerie had no idea who he was talking about. "He invents things and studies ghosts like my parents. He's the mayor. And he has a way of getting hold of some ghosts. I knew he could find Phantom if he wanted. And Phantom rescued Sam and Tucker." Everything he'd said strictly true. He was proud of his sly wording. If Valerie could see Vlad in a somewhat better lighting, maybe she wouldn't be so keen on chasing the dangerous hybrid down again in the near future.

"So… Vlad… he helped you?" Valerie asked hesitantly.

Danny gave her an ambiguous, half-smile.

"It's just… I've met Mr. Masters a few times. I know him a little." She started.

"Really?" Danny feigned surprise. "You know the mayor? How?"

"He was my Father's boss back when he was in charge of Axion Labs." She tossed her mass of curly hair. And Danny nodded in remembrance. He'd forgotten about that. "I just want to say… Don't… Don't get too close to him, ok?"

Danny looked at her curiously. "Why?" He was interested to know how she'd spin this.

"I just… I get a weird vibe off him, s'all. He's a bit smarmy and he's got too many secrets, even for an old business man." She grumbled, avoiding his eyes as she fixed with the headband on her head.

Danny was actually touched by her concern and he grinned. "Oh, don't worry. Vlad comes in handy every now and again, but he's no friend of mine. I know how to handle crazy fruitloops like him."

Valerie burst out laughing at that one. "Oh yes, I like that. 'Fruitloop'. I'll definitely be calling him that the next time I see him."

"Hey now," Danny brought up a finger and wagged it in her face. "If you can tell me to steer clear of the man then I'm going to tell you the same thing. You shouldn't go around pulling Vlad's tail if you don't have all your ducks in a row. Trust me."

"Mixing metaphors, are we?" Valerie smiled widely at him. "Are we that serious?"

"Yes, well—"

"Ms. Gray, Mr. Fenton, on your way to homeroom, I assume? I realize that arriving on time might have become a foreign concept to both of you, but when the second bell rings that is generally when we are supposed to be _in_ class." Mr. Lancer sent the two teens a stern look.

Danny and Valerie exchanged identical wry expressions.

"Now come along, we're just about to get started." Mr. Lancer opened the door to his classroom and Valerie obediently ducked inside. But as Danny made to do the same, Mr. Lancer halted him.

"Just a moment, Mr. Fenton. I would like to have a word with you." The teacher closed the door, leaving them in the empty hallway and Danny gulped. This was the moment he'd been dreading.

"I have a note, sir." The raven-haired teen said hastily, digging into his pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper that had gained a fair number of crinkles in it since Jazz had handed it to him barely ten minutes ago. "I was sick on Friday—so were Sam and Tucker." He added quickly. "And Jazz had to look after us 'cause Mom and Dad had work."

"Yes… Thank you Mr. Fenton. It definitely refreshing to see your absence excused by a note." Mr. Lancer scanned the note and, seemingly satisfied, tucked it into his shirt pocket. "But that's not why I asked to speak with you."

"I-It's not…" Danny trailed off warily.

"…" Mr. Lancer gazed at him and that look was so strange that it sent a thrill of anxiety through Danny. His shoulders stiffened and he leaned back unconsciously, almost as though in an effort to physically protect his secrets by curling into himself. He only just managed to stop himself from stepping backward.

"How are you doing, Mr. Fenton—Daniel?"

"I'm fine?" Danny frowned at the drop in formality.

"Are you sure? Your grades and your behaviour have been a bit erratic recently… Daniel… I am concerned that something… something serious might be going on."

Not a single excuse, explanation or smart remark made its home in Danny's blank mind. So he stuck with the only excuse ready on his tongue.

_Deny. Everything._

"I-I'm sorry Mr. Lancer, but nothing's wrong." He shook his head. "I had a few bad grades but I'm working to pull those up." He couldn't quite meet his teacher's eyes as he spoke so he focused on the man's chin instead.

Mr. Lancer stared down at him, and Danny could feel the heat slowly rising in his cheeks. He wasn't sure how long they stayed like that but eventually Danny forced a cough, looking down the hall to the clock on the wall.

"Uh… Shouldn't we, uh, head into class? Homeroom's almost over…"

Mr. Lancer checked his watch, sighed. "Yes, I suppose you're right, Mr. Fenton." It seemed Mr. Lancer only used his students' first name when he was trying to interrogate them.

"But I want you to know that I will be supervising your detention this afternoon, and I would like to return to this topic."

For a fraction of a second, Danny's eyes narrowed, but he turned his head away and pretended to swipe at something in the corner of one eye to cover up his expression of frustration. Honestly—he'd only been at school for maybe twenty minutes and already people were shredding away his nerves.

Mr. Lancer opened the door to the classroom and nodded for Danny to enter ahead of him.

Predictably, the moment Danny crossed the threshold, the lively noise level in the classroom dropped to a dead hush. Every pair of eyes in the room fixed on him and Danny winced, clutching spasmodically at the backpack on his left shoulder. He had wanted to avoid this—the stares, the whispers, the _looks_—by slipping in unnoticed with the rest of the class. Or, failing that, at least having Valerie taking the walk of shame with him would've been a preferable option to doing it alone. But of course, Lancer holding him back had completely shut the window on that opportunity.

Slowly, he made his way down the rows to where Sam and Tucker had saved him a spot near them. As he passed between the desks people goggled at him then leaned in and whispered to each other behind his back. He grit his teeth and forced his feet forward—why did Sam and Tucker have to sit at the very back of the classroom?

Dash was a couple of rows over and his eyes spat daggers. One of his jock cronies stuck a foot out and Danny tripped, stumbling, but caught his balance before he fell to the ground. A ripple of laughter went through the class.

"_Freak._" Someone hissed in Danny's ear.

"_What a loser_." Another voice sneered. And, in the corner of his periphery vision, Danny saw a spark of yellow.

"Ok settle down. Settle _down_ everyone. Eyes forward. We have some important announcements to get through today." Mr. Lancer's order, mildly effectual, gave Danny the opportunity he needed to pass by the group of popular kids without another incident.

After an eternity, Danny made it to his seat and slumped into the chair. Tucker, on his right, sent him a sympathetic shrug, which Danny returned with a half-hearted grimace as he tried to rub away the ghostly afterimage of yellow in his eyes.

"Now, as you all are aware, this past weekend one of our staff members was met with a very tragic accident." Mr. Lancer had his hands on his desk and leaned forward as he spoke. "The loss of Mr. Talbot, who many of you had for Chemistry I, has hit the school hard. As such, in lieu of today's morning classes, we will be holding an assembly and a short vigilance in the auditorium for the first half of the day. You will then have an early lunch. Afternoon classes will proceed as normally scheduled. Today is Day 3 on your schedule. Now, in a few moments there will be an announcement calling us down to the auditorium by class number. I want you to proceed in an orderly fashion…"

Mr. Lancer continued giving instructions, but Danny was no longer listening as he leaned forward to poke Sam in the back.

"Did you know about this?" He asked in a shocked whisper, meeting Sam's violet eyes as she turned around, and then turned his head to Tucker. "Did you?"

He received two headshakes in response.

"Man, that's pretty bad. I didn't really like Talbot, but he was a pretty laid back guy. It's weird to think he's _dead_. I wonder what happened" Tucker mused. "Lancer said it was an accident."

"Oh, no one thinks it was an accident. Lancer's probably just saying that because the school board doesn't want to traumatize our poor teenaged brains."

Danny, Sam and Tucker looked over at Valerie who had spoken up. Sitting next to Sam, the girl lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Everybody heard what happened. I can't believe you guys don't know…Well… I guess _you_ wouldn't…" She sent both Tucker and Sam knowing looks. "And _you_ were probably too stressed to watch the news over the weekend." She finished, raising an eyebrow in Danny's direction.

"_Eavesdropping_, Valerie? Why am I not surprised?" Sam's lips twisted, eyelids lowered as she looked at the other girl. Valerie shot Sam a glare and probably would have snapped off a scathing reply if Danny hadn't hastened to interrupt.

"So it's true? Mr. Talbot really—he's gone? And it wasn't an accident? What happened then?" Danny questioned.

Valerie's green eyes softened on Danny. "Yeah… It happened—well," she quickly amended. "The _police_ think it happened sometime Friday night. He wasn't discovered until Saturday morning though. The official report is that he drowned. But he was found near _Quidi Vidi_."

"But that pond is practically a wading pool." Tucker scoffed incredulously. "You could stand up even at its centre."

"Exactly." Valerie agreed, pointing at Tucker. "That's why it couldn't be an accident."

"Well…if he fell and smacked his head off a rock…?" Danny suggested.

Sam shook her head. "The only way that would work is if he fell off the path and hit something on his way down. But there's a wide bank of cattails and grass all around that pond—I go there sometimes to walk. I know the place pretty well." She said defensively when the others looked at her in surprise. "And you can't canoe in Quidi Vidi, so he couldn't have fallen out of a boat or something. Which means…"

Valerie nodded at Sam. "He either committed suicide, or was murdered."

There was a heavy silence after those words.

"Murder?" Tucker eventually said with a weak laugh. "You've gotta be kidding. You never hear about _murder_ in Amity Park."

"But there's something else…" Valerie leaned forward and, taking her cue, Danny, Tucker and Sam did the same. The teens put their heads in a tight circle. On Valerie's other side, Star gave her friend a bizarre look. Then the blonde girl's eyes met Danny's and she quickly looked away.

"Guess who found him?" Valerie whispered excitedly.

"Mr. Talbot?" Danny clarified. When Valerie nodded, he simply shrugged. "I dunno, tell us."

"It was _Paulina!_" For a moment Valerie sat back, soaking up the amazed stares her audience was giving her. "And she didn't just find him, she tripped over him while talking to Star on the phone. She broke a heel." Valerie made a gruff, exasperated sound at the back of her throat. "That's why she's not in class right now; she's one of the people who'll be speaking during the assembly, so I guess she had to go down to the auditorium and prepare."

"Paulina's not in class?" Danny asked. Surprised, he raised his head and scanned the classroom. Indeed, the spot on the other side of the classroom near the window where Paulina usually sat preening before the morning classes was now empty. Strange that he hadn't noticed that.

Reading his expression easily, Sam raised an eyebrow. "Is it really _that_ surprising that you didn't notice she wasn't here?"

"Hehehehe…" Danny laughed nervously, avoiding her gaze. He'd recognized the familiar, dangerous lilt in her voice. "It's not that… uh… I'm just surprised I didn't notice the empty seat. I didn't think I was that distracted." His excuses didn't seem to help him at all. Now both Sam and Valerie were frowning at him disapprovingly.

"Yes, 'cause we all know it'd take nothing short of a ghost attack in the middle of class to distract a boy enough for him to forget _Paulina_." Sam snarked with a roll of her eyes. She and Valerie exchanged annoyed looks and Danny groaned, putting his head on his desk.

Turning to the side, he propped one arm up to hide from the girls as he addressed Tucker. "Why is it that the only time they're getting along is when they're both getting mad at me?"

Tucker was barely lending the comment an ear. He'd pulled out his somewhat battered PDA and was prodding at it experimentally, tongue caught between his teeth. "Mystery of girls, dude." He shrugged unsympathetically. "I've got a better question for you: why is it that whenever I try to access any of my applications, everything turns black and screen after screen of green binary starts scrolling by? It makes no sense—binary doesn't scroll!" He enlightened his PDA emphatically.

Danny stared at his friend blankly.

Valerie noticed the PDA in Tucker's hands. "Oh so Danny got that back to you? That's good; and it still works?"

Tucker made a face, tilting his head from side to side. "Ehh…It _works_, but only if you call 'turning on' 'working'. I can't access any of my functions or programs and odd things keep happening ever now and aga—Hey!" Tucker flinched, nearly dropping when the PDA when it sparked in his hands. "Like that. That's the second time she's done that." He took the PDA in both hands and held it out dramatically before him. "Oh Rosalina! Why are you being so cruel? It's like you don't even know me anymore! But we've spent so much time together! All the free downloads; the cutting edge software! We've gone through so much together, but now it's like you're rejecting me! Oh the _payments_! I only had two more payments…" And he flopped over his desk, dissolving into tragic sobs.

Valerie looked torn between laughing and cringing away. "Is he all right?" She had been about to tack an 'in the head' to the end of that sentence, but bit back on the words. She _was_ attempting to be nicer to Danny's friends, after all.

Danny patted Tucker on the shoulder awkwardly. "He'll be fine." He said over Tucker's weeping. "He's always protective of his PDAs, even if they do seem to get cycled out at a faster and faster rate."

"And whose fault is _that?_" Tucker quickly rebutted, head jerking up, suddenly cured of his despair.

"Hey, don't blame me for your commitment issues!" Danny grinned.

"At least I'm not totally oblivious!"

"Whaddaya mean oblivious? I'm so not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Remember the glue incident?"

"Hey, how was _I_ supposed to know at 8 years old that glue melts in water? And that wasn't obliviousness, that was just lack of knowledge. And besides it was _your _idea to try and send _smoke signals_."

Disinterested in the boys' childishness, Sam turned to Valerie. "You said you found Tucker's PDA _outside_ the ghost museum?"

"Yeah," Valerie affirmed. "Why? Is that strange?" Silently she was wondering why exactly it would be _Danny's_ fault that Tucker's PDAs kept getting destroyed.

"It is, kinda." Tucker said, as he and Danny stalled their light-hearted bickering to tune back into the conversation. "I mean, I dropped it _inside _the museum. So how'd it get outside?"

"Someone picked it up and dropped it outside?" Valerie shrugged. "I don't know. All I know is I found it sitting outside that giant, green shield on the pavement. Just be glad it didn't get stepped on before I got to it."

Tucker bobbed his head and opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the PA system before a word could leave his mouth.

"_Classrooms 208, 209, 210 and 211 please head down to the auditorium. Classrooms 208, 209, 210 and 211 to the auditorium now."_

"That's us," Mr. Lancer announced, gesturing to the door. "You may leave your things at your desks. Please exit in a single file—_single file, students!_"

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_End Chapter 29_

_To Be Continued…_

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Quite a few people added this story to their favourites or alerts since last chapter. _Won't you say hello, lurkers?_

As for what Danny and Tucker were doing as kids that involved glue and smoke signals… you're guess is as good as mine, hohoho.

To my amazing reviewers: you didn't just encourage me to write this chapter, you also inspired some bright moments during the dregs of exam week: **Senside, supaherolena02, DPfruitloop, Phanfan925, MidnightResWri, Ribke D'Crazy, MsFrizzle, Jay Rosie, Yugisrose, smallvillephantom14, Tales from within, Honeygirl30, NeverEnough15, Valid User Name, Princess of Rose, VampireFrootloopsRule, Hopeistheway **and **TheAuthorAnonymous!**

Check back in two weeks for an update!

**Adio!**


	30. Interview With the Master

**Chapter 30! It's a milestone! And it's LONG!**

This Fic now officially has **FANART!** Thank you **VampireFrootLoopsRule **for your awesome rendition of Legion! You can find the picture here (without the spaces and replace the DOTs with periods): vampirefrootloopsrulDOT deviantartDOT com/#/d4yifpy (or, alternatively, visit my profile and click on the link to my DeviantArt page and find it under my favourites)

**Disclaimsies**... Although... There is this _one _little thing...

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulchre**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 30 — **Interview With the Master_

Danny slouched in his seat, resisting the urge to raise his feet and rest his heels on top of the chair in front of him. Next to him, Sam had kicked off her combat boots and somehow managed to fold both legs underneath her. She sat comfortably, head propped up on the knuckles of one raised hand, and stared ahead at the many rows of seats filled with the rowdy students of Casper High.

Tucker was on Danny's other side, hunched over to hide the glowing screen of his PDA as he continued to poke and prod the thing like a man possessed.

One row down, the substitute was attempting to call role. Mid-way through their organized march to the auditorium, Mr. Lancer had abandoned his class in the hands of this sub as he went backstage to prepare his presentation. Quite a few students had subsequently mysteriously gone missing from the line and the substitute, a bespectacled woman whose faltering voice utterly failed to instil discipline, was desperate to regain control over the remaining ninth-graders.

Danny himself had briefly contemplated skivving off. But if he got caught—and he _would_; he never got away with these things—he'd risk getting suspended again, which was not an enticing thought.

Besides, the assembly was to honour the memory of his chemistry teacher who had died over the weekend. It didn't really seem right to sneak out.

The substitute was moving up to their row and Danny could see in her eyes shining with determination. It was the look most teachers got when they were gearing up to take drastic action to reinstate lost authority. He eyed Tucker, who was still tapping away on his PDA and still failing to cover the glow of the screen in the dimly-lit auditorium.

"You're gonna get caught." Danny informed his friend.

"Shh! I just need to… necessary memory… and then make sure… I can still… Then if I can… settings…" Half of Tucker's mumbled words were lost in the noise of their chattering schoolmates and Danny gave up even pretending to listen, raising his head to look around the room.

Casper High's auditorium was perhaps the largest room in the entire school. There was the ground level—with the stage and many rows of red upholstered folding chairs—and then there was the balcony, where Danny's class was currently sitting. If he sat up straight, he could see the rows below and, in the dim lighting of the room, could spot a few familiar faces among the crowd.

There was Spike, for one: the bony, gangly tenth-grader with a piercing through his nose and whose vertical strip of shoulder-length hair fell all to one side of his head when it wasn't spiked. He had been Jazz's old 'project'. Then there was Ms. Tetslaff, who looked just as fierce and intimidating one story down as she did face to face. On the stage, Danny saw Mr. Lancer in deep discussion with Principle Ishyama. The two stood next to the wooden podium, waiting for the technician to finish fiddling with the wires of the microphone.

"You there! You in the red beret!"

Danny shook his head, a wry smile pulling his lips downward, and turned to look at Tucker.

"Tuck, Tuck!" He poked his friend in the arm.

"Huh?" Tucker's head came up and he looked around dazed, as though surprised to find himself back in the real world. "What?"

"Sub wants you." Danny replied, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

Looking around Danny, Tucker saw first the heads of every student in their class turned to look at him and then the irritated teacher frowning at the end of the row. "Uh…" Tucker grinned unsteadily. "Yes, Miss?"

"Hand over your PDA now!" The substitute demanded. "And take off that hat!"

Tucker groaned, but obediently handed the PDA to Danny, who gave it to Sam to pass down along the row. As she reached forward to take it from him, they briefly touched fingertips over the PDA. A shock of electricity passed between their fingers—strong enough that Danny actually saw the white spark in the darkened room. Sam instantly flinched away, startled eyes flicking upward. Their eyes barely met before Sam's gaze dropped and she quickly passed the PDA to the person sitting next to her.

"When will I get it back?" Tucker asked over their heads.

"You'll get it back after you finish serving detention." The substitute decreed resolutely.

There was a low chorus of 'Oooo's and a few chuckles. The substitute turned away, smug in the belief that she'd regained control.

"I told you," was all the comfort Danny offered as he brushed off the lingering twinge in his fingers on his jeans, sending a sideways look at Sam.

Tucker, looking very uncomfortable without his hat covering his head, sent Danny a sour look. "You could at least pretend to be sympathetic."

"Why?" Danny shrugged. "Now I'll have company in detention."

"You're such a great friend, man." Tucker said sarcastically.

"I know."

Danny grinned at Tucker and then stalled, waiting for something but not knowing what. After a few seconds, it occurred to him what he was waiting for and he turned around to look at Sam.

Usually she would've piped up with some pointed remark: some Sam-like comment that would've made the conversation complete. But Sam was silent as she continued to stare forward blankly. She hadn't even been paying attention to the conversation. That was strange.

"Sam?" He called her. When she didn't respond he called her again, louder.

She inhaled suddenly, and her head jerked up. She blinked as though coming out of a dream. Slowly she looked over at Danny. She stared.

"…What?"

For a moment, Danny didn't respond, he was caught by the intense violet eyes that were focussed unblinkingly on him. He fidgeted, dropping his gaze from that penetrating look before replying with an "Are you okay?"

Sam didn't respond. Her eyes remained fixed on his and Danny became unnerved by the continuous staring.

"Is something wrong with my face or something?" He frowned, drawing back.

It was like a string had snapped between them: Sam took a deep inhale, her head jolting around.

"No, you're fine. I'm fine." She said sullenly, once more resting her head on her hand and turning her eyes forward.

He wanted to press her—to ask, no, demand to know what was bothering her—but at that moment Mr. Lancer's voice came over the speakers requesting silence.

"Sam," Danny persisted doggedly, leaning toward her and whispering harshly. "What's wrong? Are you still mad at me or something, 'cause I thought we—"

"_Shhh!_" The substitute hushed the class, and Danny saw the woman was looking very pointedly at him.

Lips pressing together in displeasure, Danny reluctantly leaned back in his seat and turned his eyes forward, watching as Mr. Lancer cleared his throat and prepared himself to address the student body.

"As many of you are aware, tragedy has struck the school. Last Saturday, Mr. Victor Talbot was discovered on the bank of Quidi Vidi pond by a fellow student, Paulina Sanchez. It is unfortunate that I must tell you that Mr. Talbot had passed away. It was a terrible accident. He was a valued member of this staff, this school and the community. He taught many of you, acting as a mentor to many and was a man of exemplary moral convictions. Today we will hear from a number of students who will relate some of their experiences with and memories of Mr. Talbot but first I would like to lead us in a brief moment of silence…"

And the assembly went on. It was long, tedious and depressing. Paulina came up to the podium first, giving an overly dramatic but still horrifying recitation of how she found the dead body. Her story was largely self-centred and barely touched on any hard facts. But nevertheless, something resonated with Danny.

"… He wasn't a bad teacher, I guess. He taught me chemistry." Paulina finished tearfully. "I just don't think I'll ever get over it. The experience—I think it'll haunt me forever. Whenever I sit in chemistry from now on I'll just be thinking of how I found him that day and how my new Louboutins broke on his sleeve. I feel really sorry for him, but I can't help but think there must be a reason I found him. Why me and no one else? Why did I have to find him there, all cold and… and dead? I, I just don't know." With an affected sniffle, she ceded the microphone to Mr. Lancer and walked off the stage, short skirt swishing and flashy new heels clicking on the stage. Every freshman male—and some juniors as well—tracked her walk with a lingering eye, all except one pair of icy blue in the balcony.

Danny pondered for the first time what it was like to know someone who had died. It hadn't really hit him until that moment, but Mr. Talbot was _dead_. Gone. How strange. Granted, he hadn't known the man well, but he _had_ had chemistry with him. And Danny was good at chemistry—it was one of the _only_ subjects he was good at. So naturally, it followed that he had, sort of, liked Mr. Talbot.

How strange that he was dead. Gone.

And… What did that mean anyway—dead? Would he eventually come across the ghost of his dead teacher? Or had Mr. Talbot simply… moved on? Which option did Danny prefer?

Then there was the lingering feeling that something was wrong. Mr. Talbot's death had not been an accident. And if it wasn't an accident… could it have been avoided? Danny had been shirking his patrolling duties lately. He'd assumed that since the ghosts were gone, there was no other immediate danger facing Amity Park. Was he wrong? Were there… other things his town needed protection from?

Following Paulina, Jazz came up and took the podium. She was apparently one of Mr. Talbot's favourite and closest students—information that came as no surprise to Danny—and she spoke passionately about how dedicated and inspiring a teacher he had been.

Given that Jazz had probably only written her speech a scant half-hour before the assembly, it wasn't half bad. Danny actually found out a few things about his sister that he hadn't known. He had been unaware, for instance, that Jazz would sometimes go for coffee with her teachers, taking the opportunity to pick their brains: to 'challenge and be challenged'.

'Keener' wasn't a strong enough word. Jazz was in a league of her own.

It was no wonder he could never live up to his teachers' expectations of him—those that had taught Jazz, at least—if they were expecting him to be like _that._

"Thank you Miss Fenton, for that kind and insightful speech." Mr. Lancer nodded at Jazz with an approving smile. "Now, we have one last guest speaker who would like to impart some words of encouragement and wisdom. Our own mayor, Mr. Masters, has chosen to address the school. Please join me in welcoming him to the stage."

Danny threw himself forward in his seat, gripping the back of the chair in front of him and ignoring its occupant when she turned to give him an irritated glare.

On his side, Tucker was trying to exchange looks with him, but Danny only had eyes for the thin, wiry figure striding purposefully across the stage.

"Welcome, students of Casper High." Vlad intoned after he'd settled himself at the podium. Fit for a funeral with his black tailored suit and steel grey tie, the man cut an impressive figure. His voice commanded attention and, in recognition of this subtle authority, the auditorium fell deathly quiet as the students stilled and stopped gossiping in undertones to focus on the mayor.

Danny bristled rebelliously at the mere sound of Vlad's voice, his fingers tightening in the fabric of the chair. He couldn't see it, but he could _hear_ the smarmy smirk in Vlad's tone.

"Today, you have been touched by tragedy. But even in this time—_especially_ in this time—you must find strength and courage. To do this, I believe that you need to be told the truth."

The students were practically hanging on to Vlad's every word. Danny couldn't believe they were falling for the man's oily tactics.

"Students of Casper High, you have been lied to. The school board has instructed that you be told Victor Talbot's death was an accident. I am here to tell you that that statement is false. Victor Talbot's death was not an accident. He was murdered in cold blood." Vlad paused for effect and, like a perfect captive audience, a gasp rippled through the crowd. Danny rolled his eyes but couldn't deny that even he wanted to hear what Vlad said next. He irritated himself with his curiosity.

"You all know of the ghost invasion that took place a few months ago. I am here to tell you that I believe another darkness, different, but no less dangerous, is stirring in Amity Park. A week ago, a student's cat was strung up a flagpole. A couple of days after that, someone set fire to a house on Old Elm street. Now, someone has died. Whoever it is committing these atrocious acts, he is dangerous and he is escalating. You may be wondering why I am telling you this. I am telling you because I believe that the truth empowers; I believe that truth gives us the greatest weapon to fight against this coming darkness. I am doing everything in my power to stop this criminal. The state is doing everything in its power to keep you safe. But we cannot work alone. Students! Take vigilance! When you walk down the streets at night do not go alone. Do not do this criminal's work for him: tell someone where you will be at all times. If you see any suspicious activity, whether it is a ghost or a human, call the hotline immediately. Do not try and play hero; leave the police work to the professionals and, most importantly, remember that you are not alone. You need never act alone. There are people willing to help you, should you ever need it. I will repeat it once more: there is a shadow falling over Amity Park. A dark time is approaching us. This is only the beginning. But, if you are willing to reach out, I am willing to help." And with these last words, Vlad's gaze lifted and Danny froze as he felt those cold, calculating eyes fix straight on him.

"This burden is not yours alone. I am always watching, and I will be here to grasp your hand when it reaches out to me."

"_Meet me outside the auditorium after the assembly ends."_ Danny visibly shivered and coughed into a fist to hide the blue mist he was exhaling as a low voice murmured over his shoulder. _"Stay behind after your class leaves. We have many things to discuss."_

"Ghost?" Tucker asked, looking at him curiously.

Danny shook his head. "Just Vlad. He wanted to give me a message." He rubbed his ear, trying not to be creeped out by the feeling of having Vlad's voice so close.

"Yeah, I saw," Tucker nodded down at Vlad who was thanking the audience for their time. "The way he looked up at us… at _you_." Tucker glanced at Danny. "Even I felt it. It was creepy."

"Creepy… yeah." Around them, everyone suddenly began clapping and Danny twitched with surprise. He hadn't realized Vlad had finished talking.

"What do you think he was talking about? 'Darkness', 'truth' and not being 'alone'… He used those words a lot."

"I dunno…" Danny trailed off, looking down at the stage. Vlad had already disappeared, ostensibly to wait for their meeting. "But whatever it is it can't be good."

"…As a last matter of administrative importance," Mr. Lancer was saying. "I would like to welcome to our faculty a new member. Please welcome Dr. Bartholomew Ignatiev."

Standing next to Mr. Lancer, a tall, thin man with a shock of messy white hair inclined his head, but made no move to take the podium.

"Dr. Ignatiev taught for many years at the University of Wisconsin until his recent retirement. He has kindly agreed to come out of retirement to teach at Casper High for the rest of the year. Although the circumstances of his arrival are tragic, we are still very lucky to have him here and I hope all of you will make him feel welcome. I see we are now running into your lunch hour so I will wrap up and allow Dr. Ignatiev to further introduce himself in your classes. Thank you for coming and please remain seated. We will exit in an orderly fashion by class number."

"Tucker," Danny leaned closer to his friend. "I'm gonna stay back and have a little conversation with Vlad. So don't wait up, 'kay?"

Tucker nodded, although he gave Danny a long look. "You sure you don't need backup? The dude is a nut. And he always finds a way to mess with you."

"Don't worry about me." One side of Danny's mouth quirked upward.

"Just try and stay out of a fight. I know you're not a hundred percent yet." Tucker commented as fitted his hat back on. He gave a contented sigh at having the familiar weight on his head.

Danny nodded, surprised Tucker had noticed. "I'm not the only one." The hybrid said, looking over at Sam, who was still curled up in her seat.

"You okay Sam?" He asked.

"Huh?" She looked up at him. "Sure, why?"

He was taken aback at how lively and normal Sam suddenly appeared. "It's just… you were a bit… out of it earlier."

Sam raised an eyebrow at him. "What are you talking about? I feel fine. C'mon, the Sub's calling us to leave." And she rose from her seat.

"O-ok_ay_…" Danny drawled uncertainly. "If you say so…"

But as they exited the room, Danny touched her arm.

"I'm staying behind. Vlad." He explained.

Sam sighed. "Fine. I figured it'd be something like that. Just be careful, that man is always messing with your head."

Danny laughed. "That's what Tucker said."

"Tucker was right."

"Okay," Danny nodded

"Yep."

"So, I'll see you at lunch?"

"After lunch, remember? You have in-class suspension so you have a supervised lunch."

Danny grimaced. "That's right… I guess I'll see you in fourth period then."

"Yeah." Sam agreed.

"Okay, so… see you, then."

"Right. See you."

"Bye."

"Bye."

And with that painfully awkward goodbye, they parted. Tucker making strange faces at them as he also left.

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His plan had been to lose himself in the crowd and turn invisible. But too many people were edging around him—staring, whispering, _watching_—and he was forced to duck into the bathroom to escape the crowd of suspicious eyes.

Danny called first invisibility then intangibility, feeling the power rush over him in a cool wave as he stepped back into the lobby. After that he simply waited, indulging in the odd feeling of having multiple bodies rush right _through_ him. It was a strange sensation—one that he didn't particularly enjoy. There was these small sparks… sparks of_something_ that he always encountered when passing through living creatures_. _As someone passed through his intangible body, this spark would steal through him, brushing up against and briefly electrifying his heart. His chest would tighten reactively with the jolt.

It was a disturbing, confusing feeling. The jolts were energizing but at the same time they filled him with false adrenaline—like downing three cups of coffee too late at night. The buzz made him jittery and hypersensitive.

Eventually, Danny did shift out of the stream of students. Opposite the entrance to the auditorium, was a curved staircase leading down to a set of doors that opened to the outside. Twin pillars flanked the double doors like stone sentinels and it was to one of these that Danny floated.

Floated… yes, that was probably the correct word to use. Because Danny didn't really think 'walking' applied when his feet were intangible and hovering just short of the ground.

Reaching the pillar, he let the intangibility fall and dropped back down to the hard floor. Sustaining his invisibility, Danny leaned against the pillar and waited.

Allowing his head to list, Danny pressed his cheek against the cool surface of the pillar and revelled in the simple feeling. As the last of the students trickled out of the auditorium and disappeared down the hall to the cafeteria, Danny let even his invisibility fade. He didn't bother moving though—instead allowed his entire weight to rest up against the pillar. If Vlad wanted to talk with him, he'd show up sooner or later.

Danny knew he should be exercising a bit more alertness and paranoia, especially where his archenemy was involved. But it just felt so _good_ to take a moment of rest. He'd hardly had a minute alone since waking from last night's nightmare and he was so tired. Tired enough that his vision was cloudy and his eyes felt gritty, swollen in their sockets. All he really wanted to do was lay down… maybe close his eyes for a moment—let them burn softly behind closed eyelids. He brought a hand to his mouth as he yawned.

"A souvenir from your exploits in the museum, no doubt?" Vlad materialized in front of Danny.

Danny's yawn halted unpleasantly mid-way and left him feeling unsatisfied and irritated.

"Vlad." He growled, sniffing at the stuffy sensation in his head. He swallowed and managed to pop his ears. "Couldn't you have at least—Hey!"

Vlad had reached out and snagged Danny's wrist in one spidery hand, pulling the boy's hand upward and inspecting it closely.

"H-hey! Leggo!" Danny tugged at his arm fruitlessly. Vlad didn't allow him an inch. His grip was a vice.

"You have a bite mark on your hand." Vlad informed him.

"No duh!" Danny said rudely, though he flushed—he'd been doing his best to hide that mark all morning. It was one of the few injuries that hadn't vanished overnight and the only one not covered by the long-sleeved shirt he had on.

"It's fascinating. You can distinctly see the sharpness of the eyeteeth but the incisors look human. What did you meet in that museum, my boy? Vampires?" Vlad, still holding Danny's wrist high above the teen's head, looked down at him with curious interest.

Danny's eyes narrowed and he snarled. "Vlad. Let go. Now!" And with a violent yank, he tore his hand out of Vlad's grip.

"There is no need to get excited, Daniel. It would suit neither of our interests to start a fight at your school in front of the cameras." Vlad gestured vaguely at the few security cameras placed in the corners of the room.

Danny sent the cameras only a perfunctory glance. He'd been going invisible, intangible and turning into his ghost form in front of those cameras almost all year. Either the security person in charge of watching those was consistently asleep, or just plain oblivious—either way, they hardly presented any form of deterrent. But if they kept Vlad in line…

"Wait a second." Danny frowned, realizing something. "You know I went to the museum but don't know what I did there? What, you're little spy bugs couldn't get past the ghost-human shield?" Taking Vlad's silence as all the answer he needed, Danny grinned snidely. "You know, it was my _Dad_ who created the invention I needed to get into the museum." He said smugly.

Vlad didn't even pause. "Any fool can throw a stone in the way of a closing door to keep it open. The true test is finding a way to open that door, and that was all you, son."

Danny shifted under the weird look Vlad was giving him and scowled, growing irritable once more. "Was there something you wanted, Vlad? Or are you keeping me from lunch just to annoy me?"

Vlad grinned, and it was an unnerving expression. "It is amusingly easy to annoy you, little badger. And I admit I told you to wait partly just to see if you would obey me."

Danny shoved away from the pillar. "I'm leaving, Vlad." He moved to walk around the elder man, but was halted when an arm blocked his way.

"Stay, Daniel." Vlad said, as though ordering a dog. "There are things I wish to discuss."

And—so help him—Danny paused. Obeying, in spite of himself.

"What?"

"Tell me what you fought in that museum."

Danny sighed. "Is that all, Vlad? I don't have time for this." This time he successfully dodged around Vlad on his way out the door.

"Was it, by any chance, a giant demonic dog, gorged by shadow with acid eyes?" Vlad called pointedly.

Danny froze. His head snapped around so he could study Vlad's face. "How do you know about that?" He demanded.

"I know many things, Daniel. Things about the history of Amity Park that would give you nightmares."

"The Night of Abaddon?"

Vlad looked at Danny appraisingly. "You know about that?" Danny nodded. "Very good. You've been doing your research. Then, did you know that the spot where Jack found his dear, dying mother was the exact spot where the Museum of Natural History now stands?"

"No…" Danny's head tilted as he considered those words. "I didn't know that."

"Your parents haven't been telling you the full story, have they?" Vlad merely smiled at Danny's glare. "Oh, the things I could tell you, Daniel, about your parents—"

"I wouldn't trust a word out of your mouth, Plasmius. Everything you'd say about my Dad and even my Mom would probably be a lie." Danny spat.

"I wouldn't lie, son. Not when the truth is so much more satisfying."

The cool confidence with which Vlad said those words sent an icy chill down his spine. What was Vlad talking about, anyway? A moment passed, during which Vlad simply watched Danny and Danny fidgeted impatiently. When it didn't seem like Vlad was going to say anything, Danny finally exploded.

"Well?" The teen demanded. "Aren't you going to tell me something about that… That _thing_ in the museum?"

Vlad considered him. "Do you want me to?" Danny just blinked at Vlad, who smiled. "If you want me to tell you, all you have to do is ask. You know I'd be willing to do anything for you, my son, if you just asked."

Danny tossed up his hands in frustration, turning away from Vlad and huffing. "What is it with you? Why do you always have to make everything into a game? _Darn_ it, Plasmius, can't you see that monster in the museum is dangerous? Aren't you supposed to be the mayor? You should be doing something about it!"

"Are you saying the great _Danny Phantom_ can't handle it?" Vlad asked slyly.

Danny made an aggravated noise behind his teeth.

"Do you need help protecting this town, my boy?"

"And would you stop calling me those things! Little badger, my boy, my son… I'm not _yours_, Vlad!"

"Perhaps not biologically. But you and I are two of a kind, Daniel. We are different, unique, _special_. No one else could understand us and in that way we are connected, linked. You were changed irrevocably and to deny that would be to deny yourself. Jack Fenton may be your father by blood, but by his folly we have been made kin. And as the elder, I would gladly and willingly take up the responsibility of being your guide and mentor."

"Guess it's a good thing I'm doing fine on my own then." Danny said slowly, sending Vlad a wary look.

"But that's the very thing! You _aren't_! And the fact that you can't see that proves my point all the more! Daniel, watching you flounder about with your powers like a newborn chick is like an insult to me—to everything I am. Everything you are experiencing, I have already experienced. And haven't you wished you could have a sympathetic ear for_all_ your problems? I'm sure there are many secrets you keep from your friends and, as intelligent as your sister may be, there is no comparison. There is no substitute for what I could be to you."

"Well… sorry to _insult_ you, Vlad." Danny hissed. He was getting dangerously angry—if the yellow specks in the corner of his vision were any indication—and he needed to calm down. The best way to do that was just to leave. The idea of walking away irked his pride, but Danny was slowly learning how explosive his anger was these days. He couldn't afford another episode.

"If it's really so difficult to watch my _floundering_ then, by all means, leave so you can preserve your poor, delicate sensibilities because God forbid you should have to see my_floundering_! Just leave, Vlad. No one asked you come sticking your disproportionately large nose where it isn't wanted. Leave or, better yet, I'll leave." Danny spun on his heel and walking away.

He barely made it two steps before a hand came down on his right shoulder—right over the black mark hidden beneath his shirt—stopping him.

"When you came to my house, you had a crystal in your hand, Daniel. Where did you get it?" Vlad asked.

"That's a good question." Danny commended, not bothering to turn around. "You should put it to your spy bugs. Or were they too busy _floundering_?"

"There is something else, as well. When I came to your house you were acting erratically. Possessed. Now I can sense that same darkness rising up in you. It stains your voice, changes your speech. What are you hiding?" Unexpectedly, Vlad's fingers dug sharply into the spot under Danny's collarbone and the boy let out an involuntary yelp as an answering spark of pain came from the Devil's Mark. He ducked, escaping Vlad's painful hold and spun around quickly, stumbling back a few steps. His hand came up to sooth away the pain in his shoulder and he looked up at Vlad with wide eyes.

Vlad didn't say anything. He merely watched Danny as the teen exhaled short puffs of air anxiously. Danny stared at Vlad, trying to glimpse the man's thoughts, but failing.

"You know, Daniel. When I saw that crystal in your hand, it brought back a number of memories." Seeing he had Danny's attention, Vlad smirked. "The first time I saw a similar stone was 26 years ago when your Father showed me his. The stone he plucked from his dear Mother's dying hand. I had assumed that Jack had lost the thing, bumbling fool that he is. After all, he never mentioned it again after that day and I never saw it again."

"Really?" Danny's brow furrowed in surprise. "I just assumed you were the one who stole it from Dad." It was true, Danny realized: while he'd never actually sat down and come to the conclusion in his head, the moment he'd heard that his Father's soul stone had gone missing around his college days he'd simply equated the fault to Vlad.

Vlad actually grinned, as though Danny had just said something that pleased him greatly. "No, I did not. But good instincts, little badger. Always suspect the worst of people and you will never be let down in life."

Danny sighed labouriously.

"Look Vlad, as fun as it _hasn't_ been talking to you, I need to get—"

"When the federal investigators unearthed the bodies from the ruins of Amity Park, they were not prepared for what they found." Vlad continued as though Danny hadn't spoken. The man had his hands clasped behind his back, and his gaze was captured by something high and to Danny's left. "The bodies were stained coal black, with blackened eyes and mouths wrenched open in silent screams. When they cracked open the chests of the corpses, they found diseased hearts that oozed black slime…" Vlad let those words sink in and then turned his eyes back to Danny.

"You wouldn't know anything about that—would you, Daniel?" Vlad hummed and his shrewd eyes were knowing.

Danny had no idea what his expression was betraying, but his cheeks had turned cold and his hands were clammy.

"I-I—"

"Mayor Masters? You are still here? And Mr. Fenton?"

Danny winced at the sound of Mr. Lancer's voice and glanced around Vlad to see his teacher walking up to them, the auditorium door swinging shut behind him.

"Mr. Fenton," Lancer strode up beside Vlad and looked down at the teen disapprovingly. "Aren't you supposed to be having lunch in Mr. Falluca's room right now?"

"I-ah… uh…" Danny stalled.

Vlad abruptly stepped forward, turning so that he was standing at Danny's side. "I apologize, Mr. Lancer. I take full responsibility for detaining young Daniel."

"Mr. Masters?" Lancer asked in surprised. "You know Mr. Fenton?"

"Of course!" Vlad effused with sickening charm. "Daniel's parents and I are old friends, and Daniel is like a son to me." Before the teen could react or recoil away, Vlad brought up a hand and smoothed down the back of Danny's hair before resting it at the nape of his neck possessively.

It was a suffocating feeling, having Vlad's unwelcome hand on him like that, and Danny squirmed, trying to inch away subtly without alerting Lancer that something was wrong. Vlad was having none of that though, and he tightened his grip on the back of Danny's neck painfully.

"I was taking a moment to catch up with Daniel here. With all my mayoral duties I find it difficult to keep up my personal relations, you understand?"

"Yes, of course," Mr. Lancer said, with a small frown. He was looking down at Danny and noticed that the boy seemed very uncomfortable under the mayor's hand, almost as though he was trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the mayor without being too obvious about it. "But Mr. Fenton here should really be—"

"In fact, I was hoping you could give me an update on Daniel's progress in school. I do my best to keep up on how the boy is doing." Vlad interjected with a cool smile.

Mr. Lancer definitely didn't imagine the nasty look that Danny shot the mayor. It was fleeting—there and gone in the span of a few seconds—but Lancer was certain he'd seen it. It was a look he'd never seen on the boy's face before.

"Well…" Lancer started. As he brought up Danny's file in his mind, he fell into the familiar role of educational instructor and stopped thinking about the strange interaction between the mayor and Danny. "For the past few months, Daniel has been having some trouble keeping up his grades. But over the past month he's managed to turn that around. I believe his average is up to a B in almost all his classes now." Mr. Lancer sent an appraising look down at Danny and smiled at the boy's apparent embarrassment. "However, there has been a recent spot of trouble. I take it you've heard about the suspension?"

"Oh yes," Vlad looked down at Danny. "I heard about that."

"Well, if his punishment goes smoothly, I don't see why Daniel can't continue to keep bringing up his grades."

"Naturally. We are expecting great things from you, aren't we, Daniel?"

Abruptly, Danny brought up a hand and brushed off Vlad's hold, and took a few hopping steps away from the adults. "And on that note! I should be getting to Mr. Falluca's room!" The teen said in a rush. "Bye Mr. Lancer!" Without a word or even a glance in Vlad's direction, Danny took off down the hall.

"No running in the halls, Mr. Fenton!" Mr. Lancer called over to the boy. But Danny was already gone, the edge of his jeans disappearing around the bend in the corridor. The boy was fast, Lancer gave him that.

"Well…" Lancer turned back to Vlad, who was watching the spot where Danny had disappeared with some amusement. "I apologize for Daniel's rude exit—"

"Not at all," Vlad waved away Lancer's remarks. "The boy is such a shy and sensitive thing. I imagine he was only embarrassed by all the attention."

Lancer nodded in acceptance. "Yes, well—"

The doors to the auditorium swung open and both men turned to see who had joined them.

"Bart!" Lancer smiled at the newest addition to his faculty. "Come over here for a moment. This is Mayor Masters, I did not have the opportunity to formally introduce you earlier—"

"Dr. Ignatiev, it is a pleasure to see you again after all these years. I thought you had retired a couple of years back?" Vlad inclined his head at the elder man and held out a hand.

"Vlad! You _have_ changed, haven't you, boy? I always knew you were bound for great things, but Mayor? I didn't think politics interested you." Dr. Ignatiev, who easily stood as tall as Vlad, looked him directly in the eye as he took his hand, shaking it once firmly. "I am retired, this is only a temporary situation. And call my Bart, Vlad, I'm not your professor anymore."

"Retired for you is coming back to teach a bunch of rowdy high-schoolers? Or is it the particular location that intrigued you and not so much the position itself?" Vlad asked knowingly.

"I admit you have me there." Dr. Ignatiev smiled, bushy moustache twitching and keen eyes twinkling behind spindly rectangular glasses. "When I got the call, I couldn't resist. Amity Park: the most haunted city in the United States? And Casper High: on average the location of the most ghost sightings in the city? What self-respecting parapsychologist would pass up the opportunity?"

"Then you have chosen well, though perhaps your timing is a bit unfortunate. The ghost sightings around town have been scarce as of late." Vlad said.

"I heard." Igatiev sighed. "Though I will remain optimistic."

Vlad stroked his chin thoughtfully. "You may still get lucky. There is one ghost, a spectre with a teenaged appearance self-named _Danny Phantom_. He is the source of the most frequent sightings and I believe there was once such sighting only two days ago."

"Danny Phantom, is it? I've heard of this ghost. Such a quaint name. Your resident superhero, isn't he?"

"Self-proclaimed, and some might say _misguided_." Vlad modified. "Perhaps we should sit down sometime, Bartholomew. I would enjoy swapping theories with you once more, and as Mayor I have been collecting a wealth of information on these ghosts that I am sure you would love to sink your teeth into." Vlad's voice was eager.

"E-excuse me," Mr. Lancer, standing between the two taller men, was beginning to feel let out of the conversation. Glancing between them, his eyebrows rose in surprise. "You two know each other?"

"Yes, of course. I taught a number of courses at the University of Wisconsin. Vlad, here, was one of my favourites. You were a very bright and inventive student, Vlad." Ignatiev praised. "Although I'm still having trouble believing that you chose 'Mayor' as your career path."

"Yes, well… sometimes our lives are interrupted by a single unexpected factor that knocks all our plans out of alignment." Vlad said thoughtfully. "A single, unmitigated factor that compounds and changes our lives irrevocably, for better, or for worse."

Ignatiev tilted his head at Vlad. "Still have that flair for the dramatic, don't you, Masters?"

"You… did your degree in parapsychology, Mr. Mayor?" Mr Lancer remarked with some surprise.

Vlad smiled coolly, joining his hands behind his back and nodding. "I did."

"Fascinating." Mr. Lancer considered the man. "I would've thought your area of study would have leaned more toward business, or economics…"

"Ghosts and the supernatural have always held a certain fascination for me. Unfortunately, I realized quickly that there is rarely any money to be made in such a profession—with all due respect," He inclined his head to Ignatiev, who simply chuckled. "However, through my company, Dalv, and it's various subsidiaries—you've heard of Axion, correct?—I am able to find a satisfactory median."

"The head of a multinational corporation _and _a small town Mayor? That is quite impressive. I remember you always had high ambitions. It is good to know that you've been pursuing them successfully. I expected no less." Ignatiev said, forthright.

Vlad looked pleased. "Thank you, Professor. I take your words as the highest compliment. A couple of goals remain elusive, but those, too, will come to me in time."

"I'm sure." Ignatiev smiled.

"It must have been some time ago that you were in the same classroom. The mayor must have left quite an impression." Mr. Lancer wondered if there were any students he had that he would remember decades after they left his classroom. There were a couple. As for his current students…Miss Fenton, perhaps? She was certainly one of the very brightest he had ever taught.

"It has certainly been a long time… about 20 years?" Ignatiev looked at Vlad, who nodded in agreement. "A very long time indeed. I remember that parapsychology was still a highly controversial subject—it still is, naturally, but not like back then. Back then if you tried to bring up ghosts in any professional setting you would get laughed out of the room. It was a fight just to get the University to offer the degree as an area of study. In fact, I believe you, Vlad were a member of the very first graduating class."

"…The second." Vlad corrected. "I was a member of the second. I graduated in the same year but a few months late."

"That's right… the accident." Ignatiev frowned at Vlad over his glasses. "Such an unfortunate incident. You were very irresponsible working in the lab after hours with such volatile substances and without supervision. If your work had been for one of my classes I would have kicked you out immediately. I would think you'd have had the sense not to do something so foolish. Madeline was working with you as well, wasn't she? She too should have known better."

"Madeline?" Lancer repeated.

"Madeline Walker," Dr. Ignatiev clarified. "She was another student of mine that I remember quite well. She was very intelligent and a very quick study."

"She still is. In fact, you may run into her at some point. She lives here in Amity Park." Vlad said with a mild smile.

"Does she?" Dr. Ignatiev's heavy eyebrows rose. "It's a small world, isn't it? Although, I'd bet she came here for the ghosts, no doubt."

"Madeline…" Lancer muttered. Then a light-bulb turned on over his head. "You don't mean Madeline Fenton, do you?"

"Fenton? As in _Jack_ Fenton?" Ignatiev's eyes flicked to Lancer, and both men missed the sudden dark look that came across Vlad's face. Mr. Lancer nodded and Dr. Ignatiev laughed. "Madeline and Jack married? Ha! I am not surprised, I always knew that boy was crazy about Madeline."

"You taught all of them?" Lancer said, wondering exactly how connected this man was.

"Those three, Madeline, Jack and Vlad here were inseparable throughout college. They were all in the same year, took all the same courses. They would've have graduated at the same time too, if not for the unfortunate accident that lead to Vlad missing finals."

"That's right, you said you knew Daniel's parents." Mr. Lancer remarked to Vlad.

"Parents? Madeline and Jack had children?" Dr. Ignatiev said, amused.

"Yes, two. They are both in school here, in fact. You're bound to run across them. Jasmine, the elder, is one of the brightest students I've ever taught. She takes after her mother, I suppose." Mr. Lancer said conversationally. Vlad, however, took special notice of how Lancer conveniently didn't mention Daniel, almost as though he didn't think there was anything remarkable about the boy.

So much the better, in Vlad's opinion. The more people who overlooked Daniel, blind to his true potential, the less obstacles Vlad would have on his way to the boy.

Dr. Igntiev smiled, making an amused sound deep in his throat. "Well, Madeline was certainly bright, but I wouldn't discredit Jack. He was one of my most difficult students: wayward, lacking in direction and without a speck of attention. But in spite of all that the boy was brilliant. He had a natural talent that most people can only dream of."

"Excuse me," Vlad suddenly said, his expression shuttered. "I realize that I am running late for an important meeting. It was a pleasure to see you again, Bartholomew. I hope we can speak again sometime soon. Ta, Mr. Lancer." Dr. Ignatiev and Mr. Lancer bid their own goodbyes and then Vlad was gone, jogging lightly down the steps and sweeping out the double doors to exit the school.

Dr. Ignatiev and Mr. Lancer looked at each other.

"He's a busy man, the mayor." Ignatiev said lightly.

"Seems so."

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Vlad sat stiffly in the plush leather seat of his limousine. After giving the driver a brief order to return back to his mansion, he'd raised the privacy window and reclined back, teeth grinding as he wrestled to handle his seething anger.

'Brilliant'. '_Brilliant'_! Dr. Ignatiev had been Vlad's favourite professor in college. He had always looked to the man with awe, amazed by his teacher's knowledge and trying to take inspiration from his lectures. He had worked hard in the man's classes, doing his utmost to give Ignatiev the best impression of himself. And it had worked: Dr. Ignatiev had described Vlad as one of his favourite students, bright and inventive.

But not brilliant. No, not '_brilliant'_. That particular praise had gone to Jack Fenton. Bumbling, idiotic, ignorant, _traitorous_ Jack Fenton who had _ruined his life!_

Vlad forced himself to take a breath. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Slowly, the snarl of his lips relaxed. His face wiped clean of expression.

Emotions didn't help. They only made one sloppy and rash. And Vlad was anything but sloppy and rash. He had a plan and he needed a clear head for his plan.

Feeling the rage slowly cool to a heated simmer, he allowed himself a moment to indulge in the bitter familiarity of his hatred for Jack Fenton. Breathing it in like a drug, he sighed, a frigid smile growing across his face. His eyes opened.

This was better. He didn't need his anger boiling over; allowing that would probably drive him to fly out and kill Jack this very moment. Vlad could not afford to do that. It was not the plan. No… the plan was so much _more _than that. He wanted Jack to _suffer_ for his betrayal. And what better way to do that then to let him live? Let him live and make him _watch_ as Vlad took away everything he cared about. Every_one_.

It would happen too, Vlad had already set the gears in motion. What made the plan so much beautiful was that it was _Daniel_ who had given him the idea and it would be Daniel who would deliver the key to him in the very end.

Ah yes… Daniel.

What an exquisite surprise. It was incredible. Vlad had assumed that Daniel had merely taken the soul stone from Jack somehow, but the oblivious teen had all but told him that that wasn't the case. And if Daniel hadn't gotten the stone from Jack, then the only other possibility was…

Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

He had underestimated the boy's true potential. Now, as he considered it: what it would mean for Daniel to develop his power, and what it would mean for Vlad to have_control_ over that incredible power...

Vlad leaned forward, fingers entwined in front of him he stared down over them. Greed, desire and obsession merged on his face to form a truly frightening expression.

Vlad laughed, and kept laughing.

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_End Chapter 30  
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_To Be Continued…_

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To my anonymous reviewers from last chapter:

**anon:** Hehe, I'm glad your finding the story freaky :D I think I might have to check out "Supernatural". I've never watched the show but I've heard good things...

**Cupcake:** YAY! Epicness is totally what I'm striving for with this fic—see? See? (gestures excitedly at the length of this chapter) XDDD. Regarding how much of the story is left... well... let's just say I have grand planz for this story... and we've only just begun to truly play the game :3 To answer your questions: Yep, Danny still has the Devil's Mark on his shoulder. But I totally have no idea at all when his friends will notice it (shifty eyes). Nope... NO idea... ehem... XD. During the surgery, Danny really was split seconds away from revealing his secret. When possessed-Tucker started screaming, Danny's transformation rings were sparking around his waist. It was only luck that Maddie didn't turn and notice... Anyway! Thank you so much for the awesome review, and I hope you enjoyed the super-long chapter!

**Some random:** (Grins) Yeah, I realized I was spending too much space on review replies. I did cut down... and it's really (REALLYreally) only a coincidence that this chapter has a longer space spent on anonymous reviews than usual... Aaand... it may or may not be ironic that I'm writing about NOT writing review replies in a response to a review reply XDD. Anyway, more Vladdy in this chapter (I hope you enjoyed!) and... well... let's just say the ghosts might be playing a larger role than is first apparent... ;)

Even the smallest review puts a smile on the face of the author and incites fingers to type :) Thanks to: **anon, Senside, Rogue Alice, supaherolena02, VampireFrootLoopsRule, seantriana, FirestarterX, Jay Rosie, Ribke D'Crazy, DPfruitloop, Phanfan925, dragondancer123, Cupcake, MidnightResWri, Princess of Rose, hopeistheway, some random **and **TheAuthorAnonymous!**

Review! Review please! :) I really need your guys' opinion on Vlad in this chapter and Professor Bartholomew Ignatiev!

**Adio!**


	31. Detention and Spiked Starbucks

**Hiya!**

**Special Thanks** to **Kalida9** on DeviantArt (also known as **MidnightResWri** here on FFDOTnet) who made a Fanart for this fic! Your rendition of the Creature never fails to gives me the creeps: amazing job! :D Find it here (take out the spaces and replace the DOTS with periods): www DOTasnada DOTdeviantart DOTcom/favourites/#/d4zo6bw

**Disclaimer:** I cannot claim ownership. Nope.

A shorter chapter this time.

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulchre**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 31 — **Detention and Spiked Starbucks  
_

The rest of the school day passed in boring monotony for Danny.

A quiet lunch was spent under the indifferent eye of Mr. Falluca. At the very least, Danny hadn't been alone: Tucker had shared in his misery and a few other students serving lunchtime detention had joined them. Most of those students were part of the fringe groups in the school: unpopular kids, truants and rebels. When Danny had walked in the room, a number of them had greeted him with wide grins and whispered words of praise for 'working that jock over'. He'd even hesitantly slapped a couple of high-fives.

It was a bizarre experience.

After lunch were afternoon classes. Tucker and Sam had wanted to know what Danny had talked about with Vlad. But Danny put off that conversation, offering the plausible, though not entirely true, excuse that he didn't want to get into trouble for talking during class. Relaying his whole conversation with Vlad would take too much explaining for them to cover in underhanded note hockey.

That, and he didn't really like discussing Vlad with his friends.

Finally, classes were over and Danny was standing in front of Mr. Lancer's room, heaving a long-suffering sigh. One more hour of detention to survive and he'd finally be free for the day. He shifted from one foot to the other, swallowing nervously and trying to delay the inevitable. Maybe he could still ditch…?

Then the door opened and his decision was made for him.

"Mr. Fenton." Lancer said, looking at Danny appraisingly. "Good to see you on time, for once." He stepped aside, gesturing for the teen to come into the classroom.

"Please put your things at one of the desks… One of the desks in the _front_." Mr. Lancer shot Danny a knowing look as the boy made to escape to the back of the empty classroom. With a sigh, Danny moved up to the front and dropped his backpack under the desk closest to the window. It was at the front of the classroom, but still the farthest one from Mr. Lancer's desk.

Seeing the gesture for what it was, Lancer still ignored it. "We will be joined by another student."

"Dash?" Danny assumed.

"No. Mr. Baxter has practice and was excused from detention today."

Indignation flashed across Danny's face. "Figures." He grumbled.

Lancer continued. "The student is an upper year, Mr. Williamson. He will be coming in late as he has an appointment with the guidance counselor before attending his detention."

"You got a new one?" Danny commented blithely.

"Yes…" Mr. Lancer frowned, remembering the Spectra incident. "And you can rest assured that Mr. Greebie comes to us with the highest qualifications."

"Mr. _Greebie?_" Danny echoed, raising a disbelieving eyebrow. "His name is honestly Mr. _Greebie_?" That was hardly even one step away from creepy. The guy had to be a ghost. Or evil. Or an evil ghost.

"Yes, Mr. Fenton, that is the man's name. And I've met and talked at length with him myself and I can tell you that he is a very pleasant and intuitive person. In fact, if you choose, I'm sure we could make arrangements for you to serve some of your detentions in sessions with him instead of in a classroom."

"Uh… no thanks." Danny declined. "I think I'd actually prefer to stay in detention."

Lancer sighed. Looking down to his desk, he shuffled around the papers laying on the top: the upper year AP English in-class essays he'd collected that afternoon. Putting a hand down over the top paper, he stared at it.

Danny was fidgeting nervously from his position near the window. He hadn't sat down yet—he was too anxious for that. But gradually he was relaxing. It looked like Lancer was going to ignore him and start grading papers. Maybe… maybe he wouldn't bother bringing up the incident on Sunday—

"Mr. Fenton."

—and he wasn't a teenaged ghost hunter with superpowers. Brilliant. Wonderful.

"I've been pondering how to approach this topic for the entire day and I've decided that the best way to go about it is just to tackle it head-on."

He should've taken the guidance counselor. Really. Maybe it wasn't too late? He'd take Creepy Greebie, Spectra Number Two, over this conversation with Lancer any day.

"Daniel, why don't you come up here and take a seat?" Mr. Lancer gestured to a very conveniently placed chair situated on the opposite side of the teacher's desk.

Swallowing, Danny approached the seat and looked down at it as though it was going to attack him. Glancing up, he saw his teacher's expectant gaze.

Without taking his eyes off Lancer, Danny gave in and slowly sat.

Nodding, Mr. Lancer lowered himself into his own chair with a muffled sound of relief as he took the weight off his aching feet. There was something about Mondays that made the 8-hour work day just seem inexplicably longer than every other day. Taking a moment to compose himself, he loosened his tie and took a sip of the coffee in his mug. He grimaced. Lukewarm.

Once he was ready, he looked up and saw that Danny was staring at him. Immediately, when their eyes met, Danny's gaze skittered away to the side. The teen was nervous, Lancer could easily tell that much from the incessant leg-bouncing and the way Danny was perched like a bird on the edge of his seat. As Lancer studied his student, Danny's eyes would flick back to his and then quickly away again. The boy's face was starting to pink under the scrutiny and Lancer decided he'd waited enough time.

"Daniel," He said, making a point to use the boy's first name despite how awkward it felt—His 'Hip for the Un-Hip' book had told him that first names were 'the shortcuts to getting students to trust teachers'. "You can relax. You're not in any trouble… At least, no more than you are already in." He amended with resigned amusement.

The words seemed to help: Danny did relax enough to halt the distracting hopping of his knee, but Mr. Lancer still saw a hint of panic in his wide blue eyes. There was something else though, something Lancer couldn't yet identify.

"So… Daniel. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?" Lancer decided to give his student the opportunity to take the lead.

Danny's head titled to the side as he regarded the elder man bizarrely. Then, to Lancer's surprise, Danny laughed.

"Sir, no offence, but did you actually expect me to answer that question with a 'yes'?" Danny asked, one eyebrow quirking upward.

Lancer sat back, somewhat taken aback. It was interesting to see Daniel Fenton this sarcastic and animated. It was actually refreshing, considering he only ever seemed to see the boy in varying states of exhaustion. "To be honest… No. I didn't."

"So… why don't you ask me what's really on your mind, sir?" Danny leaned forward, putting an elbow on the desk and his chin in his palm. Suddenly, quite unlike the nervousness from before, Danny appeared calm. Accepting, even.

Lancer wasn't entirely sure what had brought about this sudden turnaround. Nonetheless, he would 'roll' with it, as the kids said.

"Very well." Lancer nodded. "Yesterday, when I passed by your house during my morning jog, I saw you and your sister getting out of a cab. I was very alarmed by the state you were in. And I want to ask you what happened."

"I was tired. My parents had me doing a lot of chores because of my suspension and I also had a lot of homework. Me and Jazz were out really late—she told you why." Danny's voice, confident through the beginning of his explanation, hiccuped only briefly at the mention of his sister. The teen turned a shifty eye on Lancer and paused.

"Your… Uncle was in town…" Mr. Lancer remembered hesitantly. The odd look left Danny's eyes and that was when Lancer realized: Danny had been waiting for him to fill in the blank. How clever. Lancer berated himself for practically handing the boy his excuse.

"That." Danny waved in his direction with a hand as he leaned back in his seat. "So yeah. I wasn't in the best condition. I was tired… and sick… tired and sick."

Mr. Lancer waited, but when Danny didn't look like he would be offering any more information, the teacher frowned. "Mr—Daniel. You know that's not what I was asking about."

Danny's eyebrows arched. "Sorry, Sir?"

"You had—you had these—!" Mr. Lancer gestured with spread fingers up and down one side of his neck. "You had these _things_ on your neck! Claw marks!"

Danny blinked at Lancer uncomprehendingly. "Huh?"

"You had cuts running across your neck, boy! I saw it, and I know you know what I'm talking about! I want to know how you got them!" Lancer cried with agitation. Danny was being too confident, too clever. And now he was feigning complete ignorance. This was not at all how the conversation was supposed to go.

"Mr. Lancer…" Danny frowned at his teacher. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The cuts—!"

"But… I'm not hurt, sir." And, to prove the point, Danny twisted his head first to one side and then the other, showing his pale, unmarked neck.

"But… but I saw…" Lancer's mind easily brought up an image of three parallel, bloody gouges cut into that same neck—from ear to collarbone. It wasn't possible! Sure, the glimpse he'd gotten of the lacerations had been brief, fleeting. But he was sure of what he'd seen! Maybe it hadn't been as bad as he'd thought… And Lancer had noticed earlier today that Danny didn't seem to have any injuries… But he'd thought that the injuries were just smaller than he'd remembered, or that they'd recovered remarkably well. Or maybe that Danny had covered them with something. But for there to be no marks at all… It wasn't possible!

Lancer stared.

"I'm sorry, sir…?" Danny shrugged helplessly.

"I…" Lancer was confounded. He was _certain_ he'd seen blood and jagged cuts torn into Danny's throat yesterday morning. Yet he saw nothing now, and Danny seemed to have no idea what he was talking about. Was it possible Lancer was mistaken? Had he imagined the injuries… Maybe it was some side effect of his new diet? Or perhaps the he'd eaten some bad meat the night before?

Baffled, he reached out, grabbing his mug—though what he _really_ wanted to grab was Danny's neck to pull the boy in for a closer inspection—and took another sip of his coffee. His reaction was exactly the same as before: he winced at the lukewarm drink and set it back down. Honestly he'd _just _tried the coffee and discovered it was tepid. Was he becoming that absent-minded?

He looked at Danny, who was looking back at him with a worried expression. Maybe he _was_ getting absent-minded, Lancer fretted, scratching at his temple.

"I… perhaps I was… mistaken…" It was difficult for Lancer to admit these words but he couldn't see any other explanation. He could not dispute what his eyes were telling him now. There was nothing wrong with Danny's neck.

It was brief, sharp, fleeting: a flash of _something_, in Danny's eyes that made the boy's lips tighten upward. Then Danny sniffed, turning aside and scrubbing at his nose and mouth and, as he did so, wiped the strange look clean off his face.

"Well… uh… Is-is that all you wanted to ask, sir? I have a bunch of stuff that I kinda want to get done…?" Danny stood, pushing the chair back and shifting. It was interesting. By his words, Lancer would think that Danny was nervous, but the expression on the teen's face was curiously unreadable.

Lancer sighed, but nodded. He had a sinking feeling that he'd somehow messed up his chance to get any useful information from this conversation.

Danny smiled gratefully. Before moving away, the teen glanced down at Lancer's desk.

"That's a nice mug. It's funny." Danny remarked offhandedly.

"Oh?" Lancer picked it up, looked at the writing on the side _**'I have a spelling checker. It came with my PC. It plane lee marks four my revue Miss steaks aye can knot sea.'**_ "One of my previous students thought it was witty."

Danny chuckled. "Tucker has one. It says _**'There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't'.**_"

It took Lancer a little too long to work out the meaning of that one but once he did, he smiled. "That sounds like Mr. Foley."

"By the way, do you like your coffee hot or cold?" Danny asked randomly.

Lancer looked up at the boy oddly. "Hot, usually. Especially since I most often drink coffee in the mornings. But sometimes I mix it up. Why?"

Danny had his hands hooked on the edge of Mr. Lancer's desk, and he drummed his fingers on the underside of the wooden tabletop. "No reason. Just curious." With a mysterious smile and a flourish, Danny pushed away from the table and made his way back to his desk in the corner near the window.

Lancer waited long enough for the boy to get settled and pull out a sheet of paper to work on his homework before starting in on his grading.

Five minutes later, Mr. Lancer was ready to eat his pencil. Why hadn't he become a University professor so he could pass this work onto hapless TAs? Of course, there was that small issue of getting a PhD… But those only took, what? 7 years?

The door to the classroom banged open and both Danny and Mr. Lancer looked up at the newcomer.

"Welcome Mr. Williamson. Good of you to join us." Mr. Lancer nodded at the tall, gangly teen slouching in his doorway.

Mr. Williamson, or 'Spike' as he was known colloquially around the school (Lancer assumed it was because of those ghastly spikes the boy often had his hair styled up into—Honestly, liberty spikes hadn't been fashionable since the '80s), grunted and trudged into the room.

"Mr. Fenton, meet Mr. Williamson, who'll be sharing the last half-hour of detention with us. Mr. Williamson, Mr. Fenton."

Danny and Spike exchanged looks, but otherwise said nothing to one another. Turning, Spike headed to one of the desks at the far end of the classroom, the numerous belts and chains on his pants jingling as he walked.

"Mr. Williamson, I would prefer if you sat in the front—"

Spike tossed his backpack roughly under a desk at the back of the room and then dropped into the chair. He leaned back and stared at Mr. Lancer defiantly, as though daring the teacher to come and make him move.

Mr. Lancer didn't bother. Spike was a lost cause. Arguing with the boy would get him nowhere. Danny, though, was eying the interaction between Lancer and Spike. It was clear from the twinge of resentment edging his tightened lips and narrowed eyes what the younger boy was thinking. Danny was criticizing Lancer's obvious double standard.

Looking away from those accusatory icy eyes, Lancer dropped his gaze back down at his table, still heaped with unmarked papers. Again, he sighed and decided to brave his lukewarm coffee, if only for the hit of caffeine.

Raising the mug to his lips, he was very surprised to find his drink pleasantly chilled. How had it gotten so cold? It wasn't nearly cold enough in the room. How had—?

Then remembering his conversation minutes before with Danny, he looked over at the boy. Danny, once he saw Mr. Lancer looking over at him, quickly ducked back down and continued scribbling on his paper.

Of course, Mr. Lancer thought, it wasn't possible for _Daniel_ to have made the drink cold. That was just ridiculous. Maybe he'd just placed it directly under the air conditioning? Lancer glanced upward but the vent was a good foot to his right. Or maybe… Mr. Lancer knew that it often got cold when ghosts were nearby. Maybe there had been a ghost in the room?

It was very strange. But that certainly did not stop Lancer from enjoying his now inexplicably iced caffe Americano.

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Danny grinned to himself, laughing impishly as he left Mr. Lancer's classroom, his detention finally complete.

He'd gotten away with it! He couldn't believe it!

Lancer had had him _made_ with those disappearing injuries and yet the man had practically backtracked on his own memory!

And then, when Danny had all but exposed himself by icing the man's coffee, Lancer hadn't even _suspected _him!

It was great!

Actually, Danny wasn't sure what had come over him. It had been an impulsive act to chill Mr. Lancer's drink. He didn't usually use his powers so blatantly in front of people—Sam would've given him an earful, definitely—but something mischievous had just come over him.

He'd wanted to test it out. That was what had happened. Lancer had let him off the hook for the super-healing and Danny had wanted to see how far the man would go to ignore the facts before him.

It was something Vlad had said a while ago… Something that had stuck in Danny's mind and that he'd remembered while talking with Mr. Lancer: _'Humans, Daniel, are surprisingly inflexible, and surprisingly imaginative in their inflexibility.'_ And, though Danny was loathed to admit it, Vlad was _right_. Lancer would have accepted any 'normal' excuse, no matter how unlikely, rather than consider that his student could have supernatural abilities.

All this time, Danny had been so afraid of exposing his secret when, in reality, people were so patently _oblivious_ that they'd practically do his work for him! As long as they didn't actually _see_ him doing something, their minds would make up their own excuses for him.

Danny slammed open the school doors and jogged down the steps, hopping the last couple nimbly. The sky was cloudy, but it was still light out and the temperature was pleasantly cool.

Hitching his purple backpack higher onto his shoulder, Danny grinned. Finally! Monday was _done_ he could meet up with Sam and Tucker and they'd go back to his house—

"Hey, you. Fenton."

Danny turned. There, slouching at the top of the steps was none other than Spike, his fellow detainee for the afternoon.

"Yeah…Spike?" Danny answered awkwardly—good mood spluttering in the face of this unexpected factor. After all, they didn't really know each other. The only thing Danny knew about the elder teen was that he was a deathrocker: apparently just a touch of goth and just a touch of punk and—to Sam's disdain—not serious enough about either. Whatever that meant. And he was Jazz's old 'project'.

Spike slowly came down the steps, chains jingling and army boots clomping hard with each step. He stopped in front of Danny and looked the shorter boy up and down. Danny, for his part, got a good look at the multitude of chains and skull pendants around the sophomore's neck.

"So…" Danny started, glancing over the peeling black nailpolish on Spike's fingers, the leather bands on his wrists and the silver rings on his fingers. Well… this guy sure put a lot of effort into getting ready in the morning. "Your last name is Williamson?" He looked upward, smirking cheekily into Spike's pierced face.

"Call me that and die." Spike deadpanned, his face utterly expressionless as he looked at Danny through half-lidded eyes.

"Okay, okay, fine." Danny raised his hands, backing off passively. "I'm not looking for a fight."

"No, but you can bring one, can't you?" Spike's eyes suddenly sharpened on Danny, who frowned.

"What d'you mean?"

"You're the one who busted up the quarterback, aren't you?" Spike said.

Danny grimaced, but didn't bother denying it. "Why?" He asked.

"It was good work." And Spike's lips lifted into an impressed smile that made Danny mentally wince. "You look like a shrimp, but you're a ballsy shrimp. Guess you're not just some prissy goody-goody like your sister."

"What about my sister?" Danny demanded, a warning in both his tone and his expression.

Spike scoffed. "Whatever. I'll be seeing you around, ballsy shrimp." Stuffing his painted hands into the deep pockets of his baggy black jeans, pushing his pants even lower on his emaciated hips, he strode forward passed Danny—elbowing the younger teen roughly in the shoulder as he passed by.

Danny puffed a breath of air out of his mouth as he tracked Spike's walk down the pathway out of the school. Well, that wasn't_too_ bad. His good mood wasn't completely shot—

An ominous rumble came from above. A single drop of wet on the tip of his nose was all the warning he got before the sky abruptly opened up and rain came pouring down.

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_End Chapter 31_

_To Be Continued…_

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To my reviewers: I was thinking of dedicating a oneshot to my 400th reviewer (around 5000 words). Whoever is number 400 gets to pick a plotline and I will write a oneshot focusing on that idea. The trick is that if you're number 400 then you have to remind me in either the review or a PM in order to collect. What do you think?

To my anonymous reviewers from the last chapter:

**Cupcake:** Yes, Vlad is certainly acting as though he has everything figured out :D. We have to wonder though, whether he's ACTUALLY got it figured out or whether he's simply very good at bluffing and working off Danny's signals… ;). To answer your question: yup, Tucker did indeed have the Devil's Mark. After Danny saved Sam and Tucker from the museum, and after Danny ineffectually tried to remove Legion's influence from Tucker by tossing him through the Ghost Catcher, Jazz noticed the black spot on Tucker's cheek. Danny recognized it as the same mark he possessed. After that, Maddie was the one to call it the 'Devil's Mark'. Jack, when he saw it, immediately knew that they had to surgically remove the parasite from Tucker's body. Just a little summary. Hope it helped! :) Thanks as always for reviewing!

**some random:** Oooh… now THERE's an idea (*grin*). But yes, Sam is acting quite odd, isn't she? Hmm… (*whistles innocently*).

**LexxWolfe**: Hi there! Thank you for reviewing! I'm really happy that you're enjoying the story :D So yes, you're right, this fic does have a significantly darker tone than the show. I always thought the show could've fulfilled so much more of its potential if it had been directed at 'teens' rather than 'kids'… but then, that perky, upbeat quality is what charms us about DP, isn't it? Hopefully I'll be able to keep some of that innocence while still making the story suitably… creepy (evil grin). That was, actually, my original goal with this fic: to make it creepy and suspenseful, hehe. And… thank you again, for all your kind words :) I've been having some trouble working up the motivation to write and they really pushed me to keep going. So… yes, you're awesome :D

REVIEWERS! **Jay Rosie, seantriana, Senside, FirestarterX, MidnightResWri, Magic Cabbage, TheAuthorAnonymous, DPfruitloop, supaherolena02, Ribke D'Crazy, Phanfan925, smallvillephantom14, VampireFrootloopsRule, MsFrizzle, MiraKL, dragondancer123, AwesomeMan327, Cupcake, some random, TexasDreamer01, AspergianStoryteller **and**LexxWolfe!**

**Adio!**


	32. Lesson: Malevolent Bodysnatchers 101

**Hiya!**

My Birthday is this month soooo if you want to be super nice and review it would totally be an awesome, awesome present (winkwink).

I claim no ownership of the characters. I don't own the original concept behind a 'dybbuk' either. Try Wikipedia-ing it, they exist ;P

Enjoy!

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_**The Soul Sepulchre**_

_-By Sholay_

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_**Chapter 32 — **__Lesson: Malevolent Bodysnatchers 101_

"Okay, so, a dybbuk is the soul of a dead person. Dybbukim in plural. It is usually associated with malevolent spirits. Synonyms are: beast, monster, demon and so on. There are a lot of references to hell, and how the dybbuk is an escaped tortured soul whose goal is to complete some unfinished business from its life."

Danny, Sam, Tucker and Jazz were gathered in Jazz's room. The three younger teens were sitting and standing around in various states of idleness as Jazz typed away on her computer, pulling up pages of information on supernatural creatures spotted with the occasional gory image of a demon feasting on some luckless human.

After his detention, Danny joined up with his two friends at the Nasty Burger. Predictably, the downpour that had started at the school dried up the moment he stepped foot in the restaurant. Sam and Tucker had spared a moment to snigger at Danny's drowned appearance before the trio had gone back to FentonWorks. There, they had found Jazz lounging on a couch waiting for them. Jack and Maddie were still out working and the teenagers had collectively decided it was time to get some research done on what had possessed Tucker.

More accurately, Jazz and Sam had decided. Tucker and Danny had thrown in their votes to go out for pizza. Needless to say, the boys were overruled.

The ideal research spot would have been the Fenton Lab, but Tucker's memory of the dissection table was still too fresh and he refused to even put a foot on the stairs to the basement. After that, Danny had suggested his own room.

They had taken one step into Danny's room when he exhaled a puff of fog and shivered, putting Sam, Tucker and Jazz on high alert. Then Sam and Tucker had spotted Youngblood, unconscious and faintly glowing, floating over Danny's desk.

So Jazz's room it was.

Tucker lay sprawled across Jazz's bed, head pillowed on his hands as he stared at the pale green ceiling. Sam sat against the headboard, staring disdainfully at Tucker's bare feet which were getting too close to her side of the bed. Grinning mischievously, he wiggled his toes in Sam's direction and was rewarded with a dramatic eyeroll.

Jazz was seated at her desk, reading her findings off her computer while Danny leaned over her.

"You know," She intoned, looking irritably up at her brother, who was all but perched on her shoulder. One of his arms had gone around the back of her chair and was currently hovering over her hand on the mouse, as though itching to scroll down. "You don't have to lean in so close; I'm going to read it all to you anyway."

Danny's expression was intent on the screen, but when he registered Jazz's words he blinked and looked at her in surprise. "Oh!" He backed away grinning sheepishly. "Sorry, guess I'm just a little impatient." He was practically bouncing on his toes.

Sparing him a raised eyebrow, Jazz turned back to the screen. "Right. Where was I…? Oh yeah, a dybbuk attaches itself to the living flesh of a human. And it overshadows their host until they are killed, excised or until they fulfil their goal."

"Actually," Danny noted. "It doesn't really sound like overshadowing. Ghosts overshadow, and only for a short amount of time. They never want to stay permanently in the body… Although," he looked at Jazz, "there was that one thing with Kitty, but she tried to steal your body and force you out—"

"And I was just trapped inside my own body." Tucker spoke up, a shiver forcing its way over his shoulders and arms. "That thing in me didn't want to force me out. In fact I think it was happy to have me there."

"It was feeding off your fear and pain. So of course it wanted to keep you there. After it finished whatever it wanted with your body, it probably would have tried to drag your soul out to become one of Legion's army." Danny pointed out, and three pairs of eyes turned to him in surprise.

"Legion?" Jazz questioned.

"Yeah, it's the name of that ghost in the museum." Danny shrugged, flushing and averting his eyes.

"Legion… Legion… I've heard that name before…" Jazz mumbled to herself. Unnoticed on the bed, Sam had clearly recognized the name and had leaned forward, covering her nose and mouth with her hands.

"That thing was a beast, man. Did you really fight it?" Tucker looked up at Danny.

The hybrid shrugged. "Uh, no. Not really. I ran like a scalded cat. The first time I ran into it—" _**'Them'**_ Danny's mind forcefully corrected him. Legion was _plural_. But something stopped him from correcting himself out loud. Saying 'they' sounded strange, and the others would just ask him questions that he didn't feel like answering. "—Legion was strong. All I could do was flail ineffectually at the—hm… at it. I didn't feel like repeating the experience." Unconsciously, his hand came up to press against the spot between his neck and shoulder.

"Speaking of which," Tucker shifted on his elbows, propping himself up higher. "You never did tell us what happened—"

"—You knew all along that that thing was in the museum…" Sam interrupted suddenly and her eyes snapped to Danny's face accusingly. She jumped off the bed and approached him aggressively. "You _knew_, and not only did you not tell us, but you let it roam around free in the museum for weeks! Danny, that demon has _killed _people!"

'_Demon'. _Jazz's eyes widened at the word choice.

"We don't know it did!" Danny shot back.

"We don't know it didn't!" Sam returned just as hotly, taking a step toward Danny. "And how long are you planning on ignoring the obvious anyway? Dash's cat was _hung_. Mr. Talbot is _dead_! You never hear about murder in Amity Park, and these events only started happening after the ghost attack in the museum! Add it up, Danny. Not even you could be that clueless!"

"I'm not an idiot, Sam." Danny bit out, eyes narrowing.

"Then why do you keep acting like one? You refuse to deal with this ghost, you didn't even tell us about it for weeks! You'd probably _still _be keeping it a secret if all this hadn't happened!" She gestured harshly down at Tucker, who looked like he would really rather not be dragged into their argument. "You know what, Danny? I thought you had grown up; that, after all we've gone through, you'd have matured and learned how to use your powers responsibly. But no, it looks like you're just as immature and irresponsible as you were a year ago. This isn't the Box Ghost we're dealing with. This beast is _dangerous_, or can't you see that?"

"_Do you think I don't know that?!"_ Danny's hands were balled into fists as he literally hissed these words at Sam, his eyes flashing a vivid nephrite. "You think I'm not doing everything I can to stop it? Just because I haven't gone and launched some stupid suicidal mission to—oh wait, you already DID that, and see how well it worked out?" He mocked nastily. "Where would you be if I hadn't come and saved you, huh? You going to yell at me for saving your life too, is that it?" He tossed his head, lip curling to reveal a steely, humourless smile.

Jazz looked at her brother in shock, never having heard that spiteful tone from his mouth before.

Sam looked momentarily hurt, but quickly regrouped and her expression turned stony. "Don't you _dare_ turn this around on me. _You_—"

"Hey, hey!" Tucker had pushed himself off Jazz's bed and now stood between Danny and Sam, holding a palm out to each of them. "That's enough. You," He shoved Danny hard enough to make the half-ghost stumble backward. "Chill out, Sam's been through a lot and we have a right to be frustrated. And Sam," He locked gazes with the girl and his eyes were pleading. "Let it go, please."

Sam huffed, but seemed willing to let it go. Danny however, had one last thing to say.

"You think I'm not worrying about that monster every minute of every day?" His tone was no longer harsh, instead it was pained and he grimaced, looked down at his right hand. It was shaking, and he clenched it into a tight fist. "I haven't been able to sleep, I haven't been able to _think_ since you were taken by Legion. If you guys had been hurt…" He trailed off, leaving the room in an uncomfortable silence.

"Dude, relax, no need to get melodramatic on us. We're all here, still in one piece." Tucker grinned and slapped Danny on the arm. "And man, you really need to start getting control of that temper, I hate being the mediator."

The corner of Danny's mouth twisted downward in a rueful smile and he rubbing his arm. It was obvious from his eyes that he was worried about something even though he responded with a neutral "Thanks, Tuck. I'll work on that."

Again, an awkward silence fell. No one made eye contact and Danny and Sam somehow gravitated to opposite ends of the room. Everyone shifted uneasily as they struggled to swallow their own knot of emotion.

Eventually, Jazz decided she'd given Danny and Sam enough time to sulk.

"If you're quite done." She drew the attention in the room back to her as she spun her chair back to the monitor, pushing her long apricot hair over her shoulder. "We still have some things to discuss." She clicked her mouse, trying to find her spot again. Even as her eyes scanned the writing, her mind was whirling through another topic.

Danny was hiding something. He was hiding something so big that the secret was started to burst at the seams. He was exploding randomly at the drop of a hat, and his temper wasn't the only change. Whatever this secret was, it was making him angrier, more cynical.

There was something else too… Danny was not a patient person. He was impulsive, foolhardy and had a tendency to throw himself headlong into harebrained schemes without thinking through the consequences. But Danny was not jumping into action here. From what Jazz gathered, Legion was not a ghost that Danny could just fly in and battle. The fact that her brother had actually realized this was nothing short of astounding.

It also terrified her.

"What I don't get," Jazz said. "Is what the difference between a dybbuk and a regular ghost is. I mean, they're both dead, they both have unfinished business… what else is there?"

"Well, either way, there _is _a difference because when Mom and Dad took that thing out of Tucker it didn't set off my ghost sense," Danny said, taking up a new position against the wall near Jazz's vanity. He crossed his arms. "Neither did those things at the museum."

"'_Things'_ at the museum? As in multiple?" Tucker echoed, in askance and Sam also looked up.

"They looked like people: nasty, creepy, black-eyed people with sharp teeth and long nails. They tried to stop me from rescuing you."

Jazz gasped. "You mean that man-thing that bit—" But she couldn't finish before Danny had interrupted.

"I took care of it." Danny said with such a dismissive air that Jazz, Sam and Tucker all raised eyebrows.

"Wait… did you say '_bit'?_" Tucker balked, looked first at Jazz, then Danny. The former looked uncertain while the latter simply shrugged.

"No harm done." Danny said, displaying the front and back of his left hand to the room. And Jazz did see that the horrid bite mark from two nights ago had vastly improved. There was still a half circle of puncture wounds curling around his thumb and the sight of it made a cold tingle run down Jazz's spine as it brought back the vivid memory of her brother—his back thrust against the sparking ghost shield, clawing helplessly at the hand encircling his neck, a scream of agony tearing from his throat…

Sam was staring at the mark with something like horrified fascination while Tucker recoiled.

"Dude, you got bit by a _zombie_?!" Tucker yelped.

Danny frowned and considered the mark. "No… I don't think so. He wasn't undead so much as… well… just _dead_." Danny's lips quirked with morbid amusement that no one else shared. "And anyway, it's not infected or anything. So I think it was just a regular bite. From a dybbuk. It's good that we have something to call them now. Until now I was just referring to them in my head as 'creatures'. Does it say anything else about what they are, Jazz? I remember one of them called themselves 'the damned'." Danny said in a swift change of topic, lowering his hand and deftly shoving it into his pocket and out of sight.

Jazz looked at Danny, wondering whether or not to push him into explaining more. He was hiding something, she _knew_ it. But Danny had a blank, closed look on his face and behind him Tucker has shaking his head subtly. Jazz sighed. "No, nothing useful…" A mental list of questions was slowly growing in her mind. When she got a moment alone she would have to make a list. All this was getting too confusing. "On another topic though… The Devil's Mark."

"Yeah, that's what Mr. and Mrs. Fenton called this thing, right?" Tucker gestured to his right cheek. The blackness had faded drastically since last night, but there was still an obvious discolouration to Tucker's skin.

"I've heard of the Devil's Mark." Sam suddenly piped up and everyone looked at her. Apparently still sore with Danny, she avoided the half-ghost's eyes and instead looked at Tucker. "It's also called the Witch's Mark. You remember when we used the Infinimap to find a natural portal and ended up landing in the middle of the Salem Witch Trials?"

Tucker nodded.

"Well, one of the ways they'd identify a witch is by searching the body for a Witch's Mark, which was any darkened patch of skin from a mole to a scar. It was said that the Witch's Mark was a seal of obedience and servitude given by the Devil himself." Sam's face scrunched in disgust. "They would drive pins into scars and calluses just to see if they would bleed. According to them, if you didn't bleed or if the area was insensitive then you must have been a witch."

"And… if you did bleed?" Tucker wondered hesitantly.

Jazz grimaced. "You don't really—"

"Then they just kept stabbing until they found an insensitive spot." Sam supplied bluntly.

"But… I'm not a witch," Tucker said worriedly. "And I never made any deal with the Devil, so what the heck did Mrs. Fenton mean when she called this a Devil's Mark?" His voice grew in intensity as he spoke and he waved jerkily at the right side of his body. "I don't wanna be end up the tasty side dish for some horned, fork-tailed creature!"

"Well, I admit, the stories of the Devil's Mark are a bit dramatized. Hello Tucker, are you feeling all right?"

All four teens spun around at this new voice. Maddie Fenton was there, standing with her arms folded leaning on the doorframe of Jazz's room.

"I'm fine Mrs. Fenton." Tucker said awkwardly as the woman strode forward and placed the back of her hand to his forehead.

"Mom! Did you knock?" Jazz cried.

"Sorry dear, but I could hear what you kids were saying from even outside the door." Maddie tried to console them, but the effort was lost on Danny, who literally felt the blood drain from his face.

"What did you hear?" He asked, doing his best to sound nonchalant. From the exasperated looks Tucker, Jazz and even Sam sent him, he must have failed miserably.

Maddie however, didn't seem to notice Danny's anxiousness, and if she did, she hid it well. "Just the last few sentences on your discussion on the Devil's Mark, which, I assure you, has nothing to do with witches, in spite of popular belief."

Tucker sighed in relief.

"It is, however, still a very concerning matter." Laying her fingertips over her lips, Maddie studied Tucker. "The Devil's Mark is supposed to be a myth. I came across it in research, but I never actually believed it existed. To think…" She trailed off, much to the annoyance of all the teens in the room.

"Think what, Mom?" Jazz prodded, twisting over the arm of her chair. "What is the Devil's Mark?"

"It is the symbol of demonic possession."

Dead silence followed that comment.

"Say WHAT now?!" Tucker cried, appalled.

Maddie nodded. "Demonic possession. Demon is a crude definition though, the more correct term would be—"

"Dybbuk." Jazz filled in.

Maddie nodded at her daughter, impressed. "Yes, you've been doing your research, I see. A dybbuk is a wandering soul trapped on earth. It can sustain a metaphysical body, much like ghosts. However, while ghosts are ectoplasmic manifestations of post-human consciousness, a dybbuk is… well…" She paused, thinking for a moment. "Picture two children. Orphans. The first had his parents taken from him when he was young. He then sees other children playing with their parents, enjoying freely what he was deprived of, and grows resentful and jealous.

"Now the second child doesn't remember ever having parents. His pain is resigned, he can hardly even imagine what it would be like but still he reaches out and latches onto affection greedily. In his desperation to find what he lost he sometimes grows possessive, hurting the one he seeks to gain affection from." Four blank stares met her explanation and Maddie, a little surprised that not even Jazz had understood the metaphor, sighed and trying again. "A ghost has regrets and often sustains the memories of its life. A dybbuk is stripped of both these things."

"But regrets are the basis of ghostly obsession, aren't they?" Danny asked, pushing off the wall. "If a dybbuk has no regrets or goals then what's its purpose?"

"That's a very good question, Danny." Maddie said and looked at her son in surprise. Danny, for his part, seemed to have grown suddenly self-conscious. He carded his fingers through his hair, mumbled something and melted back against the wall. "Literature is somewhat fuzzy on the true purpose of dybbuks, though." She answered.

"What do _you _think?" Danny asked, and the question made her pause.

"Well, if I were to speculate—and since I never even considered that the dybbukim could exist, this really _is _pure speculation—I would say that since the dybbuk lacks any memory of its own then it will instinctively try to fill that gap. It attaches itself to a human and tries to absorb their mind—"

"_Their soul."_ Maddie thought she heard Danny whisper these words, but, looking up, she couldn't see any change in his expression. She let the comment slide.

"—in an attempt to fill the emptiness inside itself."

"But that wouldn't work, would it?" Danny's voice was troubled, and it seemed like he'd made his comment a question merely on an afterthought: as though he already knew the answer.

Maddie shook her head. "No, it wouldn't work. Two such separate entities could never merge in harmony. At best, the host would come out with only a headache while the dybbuk is exorcised. At worst, the host would die and become a dybbuk himself."

Tucker looked like he was close to fainting. Maddie sent the poor boy a sympathetic smile, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, Tucker, Jack and I were able to remove the dybbuk. Its influence over you is gone."

Tucker nodded shakily, and thanked the woman for what must have been the tenth time.

"Mom?" Maddie turned her head back to her son, who was shifting nervously against the wall. Aquamarine eyes flickered up to her, then quickly dropped away. "Do you know what the word… Ahriman means?"

"Ahriman?" Maddie repeated a frown on her face. First he brought up the Night of Abaddon, then demons, now he was talking about Ahriman? "Danny, where do you keep finding these obscure terms?" She asked, confused and a little suspicious. A quick glance around the room showed that even Sam, Tucker and Jazz were looking at Danny strangely. Whatever his secret was, he wasn't sharing it with Jazz or his friends, making it an even bigger concern.

"Nowhere. Just came up in research. Forget it." Danny's shoulders hunched as he tried to back out of the conversation.

Maddie sensed that her son was retreating into himself and hastened to stop it. "No, it is a relevant question. I just wanted to know where you came across it." She said, trying to sound offhanded.

Danny glanced up and unexpectedly met her gaze full on. He raised an eyebrow. "I did some research while waiting for Tucker to wake up. I came across the word on a site, okay?" The 'Okay' at the end of his sentence was steeped in a tone that bordered on rude and his eyes were cool as he stared Maddie down. For a long moment she considered reprimanding him. But she restrained herself. Something was telling her that getting angry would not solve anything right now.

"Ahriman is a very old word. You know the myth I mentioned? The one about the dybbuks?" She received affirmative nods. "Ahriman was also mentioned in that myth. It was the name of the man who allegedly created the dybbuks in the first place."

"Created?" Danny frowned.

"Through vigorous research and… experimentation on the human body. His theory was that a state between life and death could be reached through just the right combination of human willpower and pain. And in this state, a person would gain otherwordly powers and immortal life. He brought his victims to the point of near death in an attempt to create his perfect superhuman. Unfortunately, his experiments backfired: they created the dybbuk—neither a ghost nor a human, but a heartless husk that sought only the destruction everything around it. Eventually, Ahriman—a name synonymous with 'evil spirit'—was consumed by the very monsters he created, forever being stuck in a mindless state of being: not-alive yet not-dead. In life he lured people into his laboratory with false promises and even threats. After he died he received the title _'Ahriman the Deceitful'._"

Danny didn't ask any more questions after that. He seemed lost in thought as he cupped the lower half of his face and kept his gaze lowered. Maddie looked around and saw that no one else seemed inclined to ask anything. Sam and Jazz were looking at Danny curiously while Tucker's hand was inching under the collar of his shirt.

Walking up to Danny's friend, Maddie smacked the boy's hand. Tucker yelped.

"No scratching. Now, let me see that." She gestured for Tucker to take off the T-shirt he'd borrowed from Danny.

"But—!" Tucker gripped the hem of the shirt, looking over at the other occupants of the room nervously.

Maddie smiled. "Averted eyes, everyone." She ordered, and checking over her shoulder, she saw Sam was studying her nails and Jazz had her eyes focused on her screen. Danny, it seemed, was still lost following whatever string of thought he'd picked up. "Ok, Tucker." She gestured for him to sit up properly on Jazz's bed and then kneeled down in front of him.

Tucker pouted, but obediently lifted the shirt over his head.

"This is good, it's healing well." Maddie said as she took off the bandage and examined the scabbing around the stitches over Tucker's sternum. She shuffled through the medical supplies she'd brought with her and opened a bottle of alcohol. Tucker hissed as she swabbed the wound. Reacting to the sound, Maddie blew lightly on the wound and Tucker blinked at her in surprise.

"I used to do the same thing with Danny when he was younger." She said by way of explanation with a smile. Although… she glanced back at her son—whose head had come up, presumably at the mention of his name, though he looked away quickly when their eyes met—she hadn't dressed any of his scrapes or injuries for a long time now. And that didn't mean he wasn't still getting hurt. He'd just stopped coming to her whenever he did.

Maddie sighed sadly at that thought.

"Is something wrong, Mrs. Fenton?" Tucker asked innocently.

Maddie smiled and shook her head. "Everything looks fine. Have you decided what you're going to tell your parents?"

"Yeah… I'll just tell them it was a strange ghost attack, but you looked me over and that I'm fine." Tucker shrugged. "They'll ask me what the black mark is, but since we don't really know, that's what I'll tell them. It'll be fine."

"That's a good idea," Maddie nodded approvingly. "I know your parents don't like to talk about ghosts, but it's not wise to hide this from them."

"How'd you know that?" Tucker asked, surprised that Maddie would know about his parents' distaste for anything ghostly.

"I've known your parents for a long time, Tucker" Maddie said with a peculiar smile. "We haven't always seen eye to eye, but Amity was small enough back in the day that everyone knew everyone. Okay." Finished replacing the bandage on Tucker's chest, Maddie stood and Tucker slung Danny's shirt back over his head.

"Now," Maddie's eyes grew serious and she pinned Tucker with a look. "Are you going to tell me what happened to you?"

"I-I…" Tucker's eyes widened with panic. "I don't really—"

Maddie raised a finger sternly. "Don't try to weasel yourself out of this. This is not a game Tucker. What happened to you was very serious."

"I know, I know." Tucker nodded. "But I—"

"It wasn't just Tucker, Mom. We were all there."

As one, all eyes in the room turned to Danny, who had spoken up.

Danny wrung his hands, but when he looked up he met his mother's eyes firmly. Such a change from the skittishness of his gaze just five minutes ago, she couldn't help but notice. "You remember how we went to the museum for that field trip a few weeks ago and there was that ghost attack?" He started and Maddie nodded. Looking around, she saw that Sam, Tucker and Jazz were all hanging onto Danny's words, almost as though they didn't know what he was going to say either.

"Well," Danny continued. "During the ghost attack Tucker dropped his PDA at some point. He wanted to go back for it, but we knew that the museum was dangerous. Then, recently, the human-ghost shield came up and we thought it might be safe just to go and poke around near the shield. Jazz drove. We found Tucker's PDA, but then these… these _things_ started to rise up from the ground." If Maddie had any suspicious about the truth of Danny's story, they were dispelled. Her son was not that good a liar and the disgust and horror on his face was real.

"They looked like humans, but they had claws and black…" Danny waved a hand before his eyes. "Black eyes. But they were still inside the shield, and we were outside and it didn't look like they could get through. But… but something _did._ It was dark and shadowy and it formed outside the shield. It was a huge shadow monster in the shape of a dog. It struck out with some dark energy. Tucker got hit. We didn't stick around after that. We picked up Tucker and we got away as fast as we could. We got home and waited for you to come back. The rest you know."

Maddie's eyes narrowed as she thought furiously. "This… this is very serious. From what you're telling me, the situation at the museum is much more critical than we first realized. Until now we've been working under the assumption that whatever is in the museum cannot get out, just like we can't get in… But if this is the case: if it _can _get out… and you say that there is more than one manifestation haunting the museum? This is… this brings up so many more variables. Excuse me kids—there's work to be done!" And in a swirl of energy Maddie swept out of the room.

No sooner had she left, her head and shoulders poked back into the room and her gaze fixed on Danny. "Don't think you're getting out of this free, young man. You left the house while you were grounded. That's an extra week onto however long your Father grounded you for." And then she was gone.

"Still never gave it a limit, Mom." Danny breathed good-humouredly in the wake of his Mother's whirlwind departure.

Then, Tucker laughed.

"Man, Danny, thanks for the save." He looked up at his best friend appreciatively.

"No problem." Danny grinned lopsidedly. "I'm just glad she bought it."

"So it was a lie? All of it?" Sam looked at Danny with interest. "But you can't lie worth beans."

"It was a very clever twisting of words. Most of it wasn't even a lie, just facts mixed up and in the wrong order." Jazz was studying her brother closely. "How did you come up with that story, Danny?"

Danny turned his grin on his sister. He shrugged.

"I was sitting in detention for ages without a single ghost attack. I had to do _something _with all that time."

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Danny sat alone in the darkness of his room, amusing himself by tracing green patterns in the air with one glowing finger. Similar to waving a flaming torch in the air, his ghost powers left a hazy jade glow in their wake when he moved his finger fast enough. Using this, he was trying to complete various shapes in the air. Currently, he was working on a series of figure eights.

He was sitting, legs folded, on his bed. A bed that he'd just finished covering with a new set of sheets after discovering several rather conspicuous reddish-brown splotches staining the old one.

It had taken nearly thirty minutes, and he'd buffed his knuckles to a painful shine, but Danny had _finally_ scrubbed his sheets, his t-shirt, his jeans and Jazz's pink jacket free of blood; all these were now tossed over various pieces of furniture in his room to dry. Actually, he was pretty impressed with himself for pulling that one off. Blood didn't always come off that easily. He supposed he should be thankful for Jazz—her bandages had suffered the worst of his injuries. By the time they'd soaked through, he'd already begun to heal.

It was… tiring. Sometimes Danny wondered if _this_ was the worst part of having a dual lives. The ghost fighting was one thing, and if it was just that it might not've been so bad. But then there was the aftermath, and the consequences. It was these little things that really wore him out. It was all this collateral that he never even anticipated until he was forced to deal with it.

Things like being cheated out of dinner because he'd come home late and Jazz had told his parents he'd eaten at Tucker's. Things like baffling over how to fix his broken dresser because he couldn't very well tell his parents he'd broken the thing _again_ after _just_ having it fixed a month ago.

Things like having to scrub his clothes clean of blood. He'd picked up a few things over the months. He knew now, the proper way to scrub material against his own fingers as he knelt over the side of the tub. He knew blood could keep a few days whereas ectoplasm had to be cleaned immediately or it would stain permanently. Tide-To-Go was his best friend. He carried that stuff everywhere these days.

He would probably be a great Tide salesman. He'd be able to pitch the product like no one else.

'_Tired of those nasty, glowing ectopasmic stains? Got into a ghost fight and need a clean shirt for picture day? Just use Tide-to-Go! One minute of scrubbing and they'll never suspect you spent the past hour being beaten half to death!'_

It was… discouraging. He went out, risking life and limb trying to save his town and then he had to come home only to scramble to clean up after himself. Once, he'd flown back home after cutting school only for his mother to ask him why he'd left his scooter at Casper High. Once, he'd forgotten to beg for laundry duty and his Mother had found his red stained sheets. He'd… told her they were Jazz's. Danny recalled that excuse with a wince. Surprisingly, his sister had gone with the lie, only mildly chewing him out once they were alone and—…and that was probably because she'd already known his secret, wasn't it?

'_Wow, I was pretty clueless not to have realized earlier that Jazz had figured it out.'_

His sister and his friends did help out on a lot of things. But they couldn't help with everything.

And Danny supposed that that was fair. He did his best these days not to take his friends for granted—they did have their own issues to deal with.

The afternoon had passed without much incident. Tucker had gone home. His parents were worried since he hadn't called them for over a day and Tucker himself had admitted that he wanted to spend some time with them. Apparently, being trapped under the control of a demonic heart-snatcher made you re-evaluate your priorities in life. Danny could relate, so he didn't tease his friend for the sentiment.

Sam however, had seemed strangely reluctant to leave. Usually, after one of their fights, she couldn't wait to storm off and brood on her anger. But not this time. This time she had hung around, not saying much but not leaving Danny's company either. It wasn't until after the sun had set and after her parents had called half a dozen times that she finally relented and allowed Jazz to drive her home.

Sam was acting weird. Danny thought, as he scribbled his name in the air, the letters fading almost as soon as he wrote them. Maybe she was still recovering from the museum. Or maybe she was still angry at him. Or maybe…

'_Oh what's the point? Jazz has already pointed out that I don't understand what goes on in Sam's head. Maybe it's because she's a girl… But then again, Valerie is pretty easy to figure out.'_ Granted, it was pretty hard to misunderstand homicidal rage. And he hadn't exactly been hanging around her enough as _Fenton_ to know if she still had a life outside of ghost hunting…

Valerie's arm was still in that sling though, and he _still _didn't know how that happened. Valerie said that _Danny Phantom_ had done it. But that was impossible. He'd been home in bed.

'_Argh! Too many questions; too many mysteries! Why can't this all just be _simple_? Give me a regular ghost to beat up: Skulker, Ember, or the Box Ghost a dozen times over! Heck, I'd even take Vlad, 'cause at least I know what his game is. This… what _is_ this…?'_

For what must have been the fifth or sixth time that day, a spark of yellow exploded in the corner of his vision, forcing Danny's eyes to track a hallucination that only he seemed to be able to see. He groaned then, abandoning his idle artwork and flopping backward onto his bed. Fists reached up to rub his eyes tiredly. There were too many incomplete thoughts cycling around his brain; he couldn't even organize it all in his head, let alone come up with some plan of action to deal with it all.

Not the least of his problems was the ever-growing Mark on his shoulder.

Danny hooked a finger on the collar of his t-shirt and pressed his chin down to take a look at what he now knew was a Devil's Mark.

It was five fingers in width and length. It was growing. Slowly. Danny supposed he should be grateful, even if all he felt was apprehension. Tucker had been completely overcome by the Mark in two days, why wasn't he in the same condition? Maybe because he was half ghost? But that seemed like a weak reason, especially since ghosts were even _more_ susceptible to Legion…

Maybe he should just tell his parents about the Mark and get it over with.

The pain hit him hard and mercilessly. Danny sunk his teeth into his lower lip to avoid crying out as his right arm convulsed and he was forced into a sitting position. He gripped his right wrist with his left hand, holding it down as it twitched erratically. The pain originated from the black Mark, then flared outward like fire. It was overwhelming. Danny couldn't think, he cringed—twisted, toes curling beneath him as his knees came up—but there was no way to escape it.

A steady burn: _'Hot. Fire, burning, searing—**H**__**urts**__!'_. A scalding iron pressed to his skin and _held _there—the pain increased and Danny let out a helpless whine, screwing his eyes shut. Curling forward until his head touched the bed, he rocked himself.

"No… no, I know what you're trying to do." He hissed breathlessly. Squinting open watery, glowing eyes, he snarled at the parasite within him. "I won't let you control me. _I won't let you_." His eyes closed again as he tried to internalize the battle. He pictured his friends, his family, and his dedication to them. He pictured school, ghost hunting, Mr. Lancer and even Vlad. His life. _His._ And he would not yield it to anyone—any_thing._

Danny slowly became aware that the pain was leaving him. From a scalding burn it hissed, fizzling down to until it was just a phantom ache. He gasped, rolling his shoulder backward with a loud pop.

"Well… I guess that solves one mystery. One down, only about a dozen more to go." He mused dryly.

Now he knew what was causing those strange spikes of pain.

His left hand was still stuck to his right wrist and it took some effort to pry it off. An attempt to wiggle his fingers revealed that his right hand was stubbornly frozen in a stiff claw, and that he'd lost sensation in the tips of his fingers. Wincing, he gently kneaded the palm of his hand until it began to tingle with pins and needles. Gradually, he able to regain control of the limb and he squeezed his hands together, sighing gratefully.

He won this round, at least. That was good.

Gingerly, he touched the blackened skin on his collarbone—it hurt, but Danny wasn't sure if it that was because it was still causing him pain or if it was the memory of pain that was haunting his senses.

Suddenly exhausted, he leaned back on his bed, snuggling his face into the soft pillow and drawing his blanket protectively around his shoulders. Closing his eyes, he tucked his aching hands under his chin.

His bed yielded around his sore body. It was comforting. Soothing enough that he rapidly fell into a hazy stupor.

His plan to tell his parents about the Devil's Mark on his shoulder was gone right out of his mind as he sank into the dark comfort of obliviousness.

Within seconds he'd fallen asleep—in his day clothes, no less.

Outside, it was a reasonably pleasant evening, seasonable for early May. But, quite remarkably, one of the windows in the Fenton household was foggy with frost. Ice coated the inside of the window, thick enough to be opaque at the edges, and crusted over the sill, flaking in the corners. Icy spindles bristled outward, like a chilly spiderweb, down toward the bed, over the walls and, most obviously, over the ceiling of the room. In the weak moonlight, the crystallized ceiling gleamed wetly, casting a soft, ghostly light down on the pale face of Danny Fenton.

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_End Chapter 32_

_To Be Continued…_

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**A NOTE : Anonymous Reviewers for last Chapter** – Hey guys, so it seems like FFdotNet listed a bunch of you simply as 'Guest', which makes responding to you individually a little more difficult. **I'm gonna give you names based on your review** so I'm sorry in advance for what will follow XD

**Filthy Tease:** Am I really? :3 Sorry (grins in a totally unapologetic way) XD

**Yayyy!:** Haha, well, I hope the wait for this chappie wasn't too long :D I'm glad you enjoyed the Lancer-Danny interaction. I'm a sucker for Lancer fics so I just had to include him ;p As for Spike… yep, yep, we'll see!

**Ready to read more: **Yep, last chapter had less action and this one was more informative than action-y… I hope you enjoyed though. As for your questions… Well, I can guarantee that Danny is not going to be taking his own shirt off any time soon, so in order for his friends to find out about his Mark, they're going to have to take some initiative ('cause as we saw from this chapter, Danny's gonna have some trouble telling the secret on his own). And how do I think they'll react?...'Not well' would be my guess… the word 'violently' comes to mind…XP

**Reading too far into things:** Nope, you're not reading too far into it. You're spot on, actually :D

**Got the binary thingy…but not the joke:** Aww, that's too bad. Did you explain it to him in the end or… or maybe the binary was just so obvious to him that it wasn't even a joke… XD

**3elizabeth:** Ha! Because you left your name at the end of your review you don't have to suffer the made up names I came up with for the reviews above XDD Lucky, lucky. Anyway! Thanks for the awesome review, especially for taking the time to point out the aspects you're enjoying , and I'm really glad you're enjoying the fic! I'm curious though, what was it that originally made you wary about this fic? The name? The summary? I like the way you zoned right in on the dreams, very shrewd eye you got there ;) It's good to know that you like the perspective changes, I was actually wondering if they were too jarring or messed with the flow of the chapter. Yay! Glad you liked the inclusion of Jack's past :D That's going to really become important as time goes on. Sooo… you want Danny to catch a break? Hehehe… careful what you wish for (evil grin).

**LexxWolfe:** Heya! Don't worry about lateness: review is a review and I'm glad to hear from you anytime :D It's awesome that you find the creepiness fits—I always thought DP had so much _potential _and the show turned way too… superficial, disappointing both the depth of its characters and its plot. I enjoyed season 1 and 2, but season 3 got me kinda down… At any rate, it's good to know you found the bit about Lancer second-guessing himself believable :D I always thought fanfics have characters put two-and-two together with Danny too quickly ;3 Yay! Glad you liked the addition of Spike! And it's interesting how you draw attention to the way he spoke about Jazz. It is odd that she was, maybe, his student counsellor (at best) or simply an annoying girl following him around trying to psychoanalyse him (at worst)—either way, she wasn't much to him, and yet he still made note of the fact that she has a brother… Hm…

Reviewers… You guys blew me away last chapter. Thank you :) **seantriana, supaherolena02, Amber Birch, Jay Rosie, TexasDreamer01, BiblioMatsuri, DPfruitloop, smallvillephantom14, DarkShadowKun, Phantom Rose-3399, MsFrizzle, 3elizabeth, VampireFrootloopsRule, Leonardo DiCaprio** (Ha! Great penname! Are you reeeeaaally?),** MidnightResWri, Allebasii, One for Inspiration, LexxWolfe, hopeistheway **AND all the Anonymous Reviewers who were so indifferently named as 'Guest' by FanfictionDOTnet and whom I renamed: **Filthy Tease, Yayyy!, Ready to read more, Reading too far into things **and **Got the binary thingy… but not the joke**! Again, I'm very sorry if you aren't quite partial to the pseudonames (XD).

My Birthday is this month! If you don't review I'm going to be very, very sad! So please Review! (Shameless emotional blackmail is shameless XD)

**Adio!**


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